Today we're launching Intercept: a $500M philanthropic initiative to make respiratory infections, like the common cold and flu, a thing of the past. We treat respiratory infections as a minor nuisance, but that’s really not the case. Most of us will spend 5% of our lives (!) sick from these viruses, they kill 1M people a year, cost $600B annually in productivity, and periodically threaten civilization through pandemics. So, if they’re such a big problem, why haven’t we dealt with them yet? Last year we convened ~40 leading scientists, pharma R&D leaders, biotech investors, and regulatory experts to better understand that. We heard two main reasons: (1) First, it’s just technically very challenging: respiratory viruses represent hundreds of distinct, mutating strains across several families. Fortunately, recent breakthroughs make this newly possible. (2) Second is a lack of funding: broad-spectrum solutions have historically been underfunded, in part because they’re not a great fit for most philanthropic or commercial funding (and while COVID generated a burst of activity around preventing and understanding respiratory infections through an influx of new funding, that hasn't been sustained). We think that with enough focus and funding, this might be solvable. Intercept is a $500 million philanthropic initiative that will take advantage of new tools to catalyze the development and deployment of two types of products: broad-spectrum preventatives and air cleaning technologies. This problem is undoubtedly difficult. But it’s more tractable now than it’s ever been. We think we should give it our best shot. We’re enormously grateful to our anchor funders: @stripe, @AnthropicAI, @TheFluLab, @FoundationOAI and individuals from Jane Street. And, I’m very excited to be building this with @incredutility and the rest of the team.

At @IFP, we’ve spent the past 3 years thinking about all the different ways the US government & philanthropy fund R&D. Until now, R&D funders haven’t had a systematic way to match the innovation problem to the right funding tool. We built THE ATLAS OF INNOVATION to fill that gap. atlasofinnovation.org Alongside @UChi_MSA, we’ve boiled down thousands of hours of research into a handful of questions covering how much the R&D funder knows about: - the problem they want to solve - the solution it should have - the team that should build the solution Why the Atlas matters: The US government spends close to $200 billion every year on R&D. And after the Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs, there will be hundreds of billions of dollars in new philanthropic giving. Choosing the correct funding approach to the social problems they’re trying to solve will mean the difference between success and failure. For example, NSF research grants have helped seed breakthroughs from MRI machines to search engines, but grants aren’t built to deliver the kind of industrial speed and scale that a project like Operation Warp Speed required. Picking the wrong funding approach can leave programs behind schedule, over budget, or without anything to show for all the money they spent. How we built the Atlas: 1. We began by creating a matrix of dozens of considerations that a thoughtful policymaker or funder would ideally weigh before deciding how to fund a project. 2. We looked at every major funding approach, from grants to R&D tax credits to advance market commitments, analyzing when they work well and when they fail to meet the mission. 3. We spent months deep in the weeds of contract theory and incentive design, looking at historical examples and the state-of-the-art research in innovation economics. 4. We then worked to turn that research into a tool that time-strapped policymakers and philanthropic funders could rely on at the start of an innovation funding cycle. 5. Three years later, we are launching just that: a new (and visually stunning) website to help funders decide how to best incentivize innovation. And all they have to know… is what they currently know about their innovation goal! The Atlas takes care of the rest. How to navigate the Atlas: Answer questions about your goal to find the funding approach aligned with the information you have. Each funding mechanism has its purpose for particular technologies and specific moments in development. There shouldn’t be an ARPA for every field, just like we don’t need a prize or AMC for every innovation. The Atlas helps you navigate those tradeoffs.