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.
okay new favorite Caddy use case
solo founder user has Caddy text him every morning asking his top 3 goals for the day
on fridays it rolls the whole week into a clean recap before he meets his advisor
literally 2 texts and you've got an accountability partner ready to go
a user just told me Caddy saved them $170k
they totally forgot about a scholarship deadline and Caddy pinged them with just a few hours to go
tbh my first thought was just “damn, we’re giving this away for free”
Today we’re launching Caddy to public beta.
We think AI should work just like a caddy: it carries your heavy shit, gives advice, and take work off your plate so that you can focus on what matters.
It lives in your iMessage and helps you stay on top of work and life without opening another app.
Give it a try.