Ever feel like you spend 5% of your life in a snotty, coughing haze? You're not wrong. The average person does. And apparently, that's 5% too much for some of the biggest names in tech.
Stripe, Anthropic, and OpenAI, among others, have just poured a cool $500 million into a new nonprofit called Intercept. Their mission? To make respiratory viruses — yes, even the common cold — a thing of the past. Because apparently that's where we are now: billionaires are coming for your sniffles.
The Absurdity of the Sneeze
Think about it: we've got AI that can write poetry, but we're still stuck with the same old advice for a cold: "drink fluids and try not to breathe on anyone." Pharmaceutical companies haven't exactly been sprinting to find a cure for something caused by over 200 different viruses. Not exactly a blockbuster drug waiting to happen, financially speaking.
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Start Your News DetoxEnter Nan Ransohoff, a Stripe executive leading this audacious charge. She points out that while everyone accepts colds and flu as an unavoidable part of life, maybe they don't have to be. Because while drug companies are busy chasing the next big profit, the tech world is looking at it like a software bug that just needs to be patched.
Stripe, founded by the Collison brothers, has a history of backing projects that are technically possible but lack immediate commercial incentive. They’ve already thrown $1.8 billion at carbon removal. Now, they're setting their sights on your perpetually congested sinuses.
From COVID to Cold War
The idea for Intercept sprung from conversations between Ransohoff and David Veesler, a structural biologist at the University of Washington. Veesler was a key player in the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines, and he believes modern scientific tools — like RNA drugs, advanced antibodies, and computational protein design — mean we can now tackle many viruses at once. Imagine a nasal spray that deploys tiny, virus-grabbing proteins. Because, why not?
Intercept isn't just dreaming of individual treatments. They're also eyeing large-scale air-cleaning systems for public spaces. Think strong UV light zapping viruses in schools and offices, much like cities filter drinking water. Because if we can purify our water, why not our air? It’s both impressive and slightly terrifying.
With Peter Marks (formerly of the FDA) and Moncef Slaoui (who led Operation Warp Speed) on board as advisors, this isn't some fringe science experiment. It's a serious attempt to rewrite our biological destiny, backed by some very serious money from the likes of Bill Gates, Flu Lab, and traders from Jane Street Capital. The US government's virus research budget hasn't exactly been soaring, leaving a vacuum for private philanthropy to step in.
Veesler, for his part, is just happy someone's finally willing to challenge the status quo. Because while the sheer diversity of viruses has always been a research deterrent, perhaps a half-billion-dollar nudge from tech's brightest minds is exactly what we needed to finally stop sniffling our way through life.
