Important science and technology development often falls through the cracks of public funding and private markets, i.e. work that may be high impact but risky, requires long timelines, or involves unpopular ideas. These areas are ripe for philanthropy. And as AI ushers civilization toward an event horizon, we need more people working on the hardest problems with many shots on goal.
Over the last five years at Astera, we’ve tested different approaches to funding and building ambitious technical work. We’ve explored a lot of directions to figure out where we think we can have the most impact. We’re now sharpening our focus on two areas: intelligence—both biological and artificial—and AI-enabled life sciences. Progress in either could help positively shape humanity’s future in critical ways.
Both areas benefit from more philanthropic support, as they involve open questions, unexplored territory, and long timelines. The right experiments aren’t always obvious, and success might look nothing like expected. We’ve also chosen them because we personally know them well. Jed is an engineer focused on neuroscience and intelligence foundations; Seemay is a biologist experimenting with how research gets done. We engage directly with technical details, which allows us to embrace more uncertainty.
Structure and flexibility for technical work
Creating an organizational structure that sustains this work over decades requires more than knowing where to focus. We’ve found the most effective technical efforts function like startups: flexible, nimble, guided by leaders with real authority to make technical calls.
Like start-ups, they also need to be able deploy resources in a much more flexible way than is typical of most philanthropy. In addition to giving out grants, we find that work—especially of the more opinionated type—benefits from a wide range of tactical strategies, including hiring, contracts, competitions, and for-profit investments.
Moving forward, we’re intentionally separating Astera’s foundation from the technical divisions it supports. The foundation handles shared operational and administrative infrastructure to enable technical teams that run semi-independently like start-ups. Each has a leader with deep expertise and CEO-like authority, supported by flexible, long-term capital and operational scaffolding through the foundation. These include:
Neuro & AGI divisions that explore how biological systems compute, how that relates to artificial systems, and what approaches might lead toward general intelligence. We think there’s a wider space of possible architectures than currently explored, and neuroscience offers crucial insights. This builds on work by our current researchers and fellows.
A life sciences division, where we’re rethinking how science gets done in the age of AI. Today’s scientific approaches were largely designed for a different era. AI has given new urgency to the need to reimagine our practices, motivating us to expand efforts around funding, structuring, and publishing approaches. We believe that the best way to innovate on this front is by iterating alongside active, ambitious research efforts. For instance, by embedding initiatives like The Diffuse Project with open science experimentation.
The right leaders
Our new start-up-like approach only works if there are the right leaders in place. We look for people comfortable with uncertainty, technical enough to engage directly, with a builder mentality to create what’s needed. Critically, we’ve sought out people whose primary experience is outside philanthropy from industry, startups, or research environments.
We’ve already been fortunate to attract such people. In the coming weeks, we’re excited to share about several exciting new folks who will be joining Astera to help lead new divisions in intelligence and life sciences. In parallel, we’re also refocusing the residency program to better prioritize people and ideas where we have long-term commitment and in-house expertise.
We’re still learning
Astera has always been an experiment in doing philanthropy differently. This structure is another iteration. We have strong convictions but expect to keep adapting.
We’re eager to connect with people and organizations thinking about new approaches to funding or doing science. Or if you’re working on similar problems in intelligence or life sciences, we’d like to hear from you.
More at astera.org, or reach out at info@astera.org.