Jim Tananbaum

Today, X, The Moonshot Factory quietly unveiled A-Life, a project that brings biomanufacturing into the AI era. It may sound niche, but it’s one of the most transformative projects I’ve ever worked on (and that includes Calico Life Sciences, Google’s effort to understand aging and lifespan). Here’s why: We now have a clear way to use living cells, like yeast and bacteria, to produce materials we currently make from petroleum and waste-heavy processes. Look around you: the textiles in your clothes, the packaging of your snacks, the medicines and supplements you take. All of these could be made cheaper, cleaner, and with less waste through biomanufacturing. What’s new is that the team built a set of AI tools specifically for biology that makes this possible at scale. For years, making biomanufacturing cost-competitive has been described as a $30 trillion holy grail for the industry. A-Life is the first time we’ve seen a viable path forward. 🔗 Introducing A-Life: https://lnkd.in/ggrYuUCS For me, collaborating on this was a full-circle ikigai moment, bringing together Google, wonderful teammates, molecular biology, and company-building all at once. Always say yes to those rare moments! Huge thanks to Relly, Jodi, Odd, and the whole team for making this such a fun version of ‘work.’ In my University of Oxford lab days, just trying to keep fibroblast cells alive, I would have been stoked to see this future taking shape. Photo: Making biochemistry thrilling since 2005 :).

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"We Only Invest in De-Risked Opportunities" - The VC Paradox That's Killing Innovation Actual conversation from last week: Startup CEO: "We have breakthrough spine technology, proven surgeon demand, and a clear path to market." VC: "Great! Do you have FDA clearance?" CEO: "We're still submitting to FDA in Q4—" VC: "Call us when you have clearance." CEO: "Okay, assuming we get clearance, are you interested?" VC: "Do you have reimbursement?" CEO: "We're working with an expert firm on it, and don't believe it will be a problem. Assuming we get that solved, are you interested?" VC: "Do you have hospital contracts?" CEO: "We'd secure those post-funding—" VC: "Call us when you have contracts." CEO: "If we had contracts, would you invest?" VC: "What's your current revenue run rate?" 🤔 Wait... if they had all that, would they even need your money? The New VC Math: 2010: "We invest in great teams with disruptive technology" 2025: "We invest in companies that look like successful exits" What's actually happening: ✅ Fewer VC's willing to take risks ✅ Family offices stepping up with risk appetite ✅ Private placements filling the gap ✅ Angels writing bigger checks ✅ Strategic investors getting creative (occasionally) The irony? While VCs demand de-risked deals, family offices are saying "Show us the disruption potential." For my medtech entrepreneurs: This shift is actually liberating. Family office partners often understand long-term value creation better than "risk adverse" VCs. The companies thriving? They're building relationships with capital sources that match their timeline, not chasing logos that want guarantees. Smart money isn't always institutional money. #VentureCapital #MedTech #FamilyOffices #PrivateEquity #StartupFunding #Innovation #SpineTech #Entrepreneurship #orthopedics Orthopedics This Week The DeAngelis Group - Executive Search Firm MSK Innovations TJ Halvorson Robin Young  

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Drug development needs a revolution. Today, Revalia Bio is coming out of stealth with ~$15m seed round to lead the charge. 🚀 I was their first check in their pre-seed. As co-founder and board member, I've watched this world-class team of scientists and clinicians transform into world-class operators. After years in the industry, I kept seeing the same problem: We test drugs on mice, hope they work in humans, then watch 90% fail in clinical trials. Revalia changes everything. We use actual living human organs - donated organs that can't be used for transplant - to run what we call Human Data Trials. Think about that. Real human biology. Real insights. Zero patient risk. The Traction: In just 18 months since spinning out of Yale: • Revenue grew 4x last year • Multiple top 10 pharma customers onboard • Seed round co-led by Brian Wilcove from America’s Frontier Fund and Ben Y. from SIERRA Ventures, with participation from Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. and other leaders. What makes this special isn't just the technology. It's the mission. Every donated organ that can't save a life through transplant now has a second chance to save thousands through medical discovery. That's a legacy worth building. Greg Tietjen, Jenna DiRito, Kourosh Saeb-Parsy, Janet Nikolovski, Helen Hughes, Peter Buniak and the rest of the team are operators who understand that breakthrough science means nothing without flawless execution. This is only the beginning. To every founder out there: This is what happens when you stop accepting "that's how it's always been done" and start asking "what if?" Welcome to the future of drug development. Shout-out to Mary Ann Azevedo for the exclusive coverage on Crunchbase! Read here: https://lnkd.in/gxUKmAFG #Biotech #DrugDevelopment #HealthcareInnovation #VentureCapital #AI

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We’re proud to share that Plug and Play Tech Center will be launching New Jersey’s newest Strategic Innovation Center in Camden and Mullica Hill — our second office in the state — with a focus on advancing the medtech ecosystem in South Jersey. In partnership with New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA), Rowan University, and Cooper University Health Care, we’ll provide startups with lab space, funding opportunities, and direct access to leading researchers and healthcare experts. This is a major step toward accelerating healthcare innovation across the region. https://lnkd.in/ghQDqg5f Tevin Panchal, Tyler Lange, Ayah Hamdan, Osama Alsaleh

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Insanely excited and super proud to share what the Prima Mente team has been building these past few months. Today, we’re releasing Pleiades, a series of whole epigenome foundation models for clinical applications in neurodegenerative disease. Pleiades scales up to 7B parameters and is trained upon a unique corpus of human methylation and genomic sequences totalling 1.9T tokens. Pleiades surpasses the capabilities of leading genomic foundation models. When applied to the study of cell-free DNA, the model exhibits state-of-the-art performance in patient cohorts for the detection of early, clinical disease. Our work showcases that the scaling laws behind breakthroughs in language and vision likely also apply to biology. Multimodal biological reasoning will unlock a new era for the study of complex diseases, the development of new diagnostics, and the discovery of novel targets. This model series represents the first of many models by Prima Mente to understand the biology of the brain, to protect it from disease and enhance it in health. Thank you to our partners NVIDIA (Rory Kelleher+Ben Griffiths), Nebius (Ilya Burkov), SIAM.AI Cloud, Eternis, and our academic collaborators at University of Oxford, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Gothenburg, Imperial College London, and UCL. Stay tuned for more updates. Blog and preprint in comments. Ravi Solanki, Hannah Madan, Donal Byrne, Jay (Javkhlan-Ochir) Ganbat, Devin Gilliam, Hayley Holt, PhD, Anjeet Jhutty, Husam Babikir, Ivan Koychev, Tim Liu, Christoforos Nalmpantis, Pouya Niki, Taya Reed, Jonathan Wan. 💖🦈

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Cardiovascular disease continues to be the leading cause of death for both men and women, affecting countless families worldwide. Despite advances in treatment, accurate diagnosis remains a challenge, limiting the positive impact of new therapies. Ross Upton, PhD, and the dedicated team at Ultromics are working to change this, and I'm thrilled to share that Lightrock has co-led Ultromics' Series C funding round, alongside Legal & General and Allegis Capital. A spinout from the University of Oxford, Ultromics combines an innovative artificial intelligence platform with existing echocardiogram systems to diagnose heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) and cardiac amyloidosis. These conditions are among the most elusive forms of heart failure and are often challenging to diagnose, sometimes only being identified after a heart attack. Up to 64% of HFpEF cases go undiagnosed, and cardiac amyloidosis is frequently misdiagnosed as a more common heart disease. Ultromics' EchoGo® platform significantly enhances detection, improving HFpEF diagnosis by 73.6% compared to standard clinical risk scores. For cardiac amyloidosis, the platform not only outperforms current clinical risk scores but also accurately distinguishes it from similar disorders. This FDA-approved technology, validated in studies published in leading journals, is already saving lives in top healthcare centres. Together with remarkable co-investors such as Oxford Science Enterprises, GV (Google Ventures), The Blue Venture Fund, and the University of Oxford, as well as major US health systems including the University of Chicago and the UPMC, we are eager to help expand Ultromics' reach and enhance its positive impact on healthcare systems and patient outcomes. Congratulations to everyone at Ultromics on this significant milestone, and to the Lightrock team – Umur Hursever, Martin Dewhurst, Andrei Xydas, and Gen Hall – for forging another impactful partnership. For more information about Ultromics, please check out the link in the comments.

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#AmTech Weekly Roundup:    Citizen Health raised $30 million in Series A funding from 8VC, Headline, and Transformation Capital. Citizen is building a healthcare advocacy and navigation platform for patients with chronic illnesses.  Farid Vij, Nasha Fitter Vulcan Elements raised $65 million in Series A funding from Altimeter and One Investment Management. Vulcan is reshoring production of rare-earth magnets, which are used in everything from drones to semiconductor fabrications to hard drives and automotive vehicles.   John Maslin, Piotr Kulik GoodShip raised $25 million in Series B funding from Greenfield Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Ironspring Ventures. Goodship is building an AI-powered freight management platform, analyzing shipping and operations data to reduce transportation costs and lateness.   Ryan Soskin, David Tsai #SupplyChain #Healthcare #CriticalMinerals #VC

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