The future is open
Rebuilding the machinery of science for our abundant future
The coming years will bring an era of unprecedented scientific and technological advancement. Exponential progress in artificial intelligence is converging with central advances in other key fields to dramatically accelerate the pace of innovation across virtually all domains.
This inflection point provides an unparalleled opportunity – and an urgent mandate – to fundamentally rethink the institutions, systems, and tools that drive scientific progress. We believe an abundant future for all is possible – but not inevitable. To bring it about, we must rebuild the machinery of science to be more efficient, scalable, and open. We need visionary leaders who are compelled by the challenge of driving transformative change in the way science is funded, conducted, and communicated.
Our Mission and Vision
To steer science and technology toward an abundant future for all
We believe:
1Abundance is Nigh
The next decade promises to be the fastest period of scientific and technological progress in history (so far). Rapid advancements in AI, automation of science and engineering, and maturing technologies across genomics, synthetic biology, immunology, materials science, renewable energy and beyond promise to revolutionize scientific processes and accelerate technological innovation. At a civilization scale, we are about to get much wealthier, very fast.
2WE ARE AT A CROSSROADS
As this horizon nears, we should not expect our old assumptions about how prosperity is converted into scientific progress — and vice versa — to hold. Will new technologies entrench existing systems of power and inequality, or enable an abundant future for all? By default, transformative change in these areas is likely to be largely driven by private investment. Government and other institutions will take more time to adapt, but we can be partners for speeding this up by charting a path.
3SCIENCE IS RIPE FOR TRANSFORMATION
In order to navigate this period of dramatic change and to pave the way for a shared, scientifically advanced future, we need to channel research in high-leverage directions, to coordinate at large scales, to improve the way scientific funding is deployed, and to ensure that scientific knowledge is widely shared. We must rethink these core aspects of science holistically, as they are interdependent.
Principles
Given the novelty of emerging technologies and unknowns about the future, we believe more experimentation around these public goods is needed to develop conviction about what will work. We hope to provide a dedicated space for this exploration. We want to help make science better, faster, and cheaper, while ensuring that everyone participates in its benefits. Our values of stewardship, experimentation, and transparency drive us, and our principles guide our decisions around allocating resources across programming areas.
Be transformative
We build for transformational change, not incremental approaches to the world as it exists today. We prioritize near-future challenges and opportunities for, step-change impact that will reshape humanity’s relationship to science and technology.
INVEST IN CATALYTIC CHANGE
We invest in public goods that unlock systemic change and catalyze broader funding and impact. We target areas where markets and institutions struggle, identify key barriers, and seek to accelerate innovation via interventions that enable more than one person or group to make progress.
DO THE EXPERIMENT
We learn through rapid experimentation and embrace decisive action. Instead of deferring to status quo, getting lost in theory, worrying about reputational risk, or being beholden to any outcome or approach, we run targeted experiments with clear hypotheses and tight feedback loops. We have a large appetite for risk and treat both successes and failures as valuable sources of insight.
BE RADICALLY TRANSPARENT
We recognize the multiplicative effect of radical transparency. We’re committed to doing all we can to make it easy for others to follow, reuse, and improve on whatever we do, and build this commitment into our program design at a foundational level.
Approach
To achieve this mission, Astera supports the creation of public goods to accelerate scientific and technological progress – goods like non-proprietary infrastructure, tools, datasets, playbooks, and standards.
At Astera, we want to meet the challenge of this moment by seeding a vibrant ecosystem of mission-driven, open-source products and organizations. We aim to play a leading role in the transition to a shared and abundant future by experimenting with unexplored approaches, embracing scientific and technical risk, and leveraging our $2.5 billion endowment to chase impact at scale.
