El Chisme

Brian Armstrong, the billionaire CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, says he’s ready to fund a US startup focused on gene-editing human embryos. If he goes forward, it would be the first major commercial investment in one of medicine’s most fraught ideas.

In a post on X June 2, Armstrong announced he was looking for gene-editing scientists and bioinformatics specialists to form a founding team for an “embryo editing” effort targeting an unmet medical need, such as a genetic disease.

“I think the time is right for the defining company in the US to be built in this area,” Armstrong posted.

The announcement from a deep-pocketed backer is a striking shift for a field considered taboo following the 2018 birth of the world’s first genetically edited children in China—a secretive experiment that led to international outrage and prison time for the lead scientist.

According to Dieter Egli, a gene-editing scientist at Columbia University whose team has briefed Armstrong, his plans may be motivated in part by recent improvements in editing technology that have opened up a safer, more precise way to change the DNA of embryos.

That technique, called base editing, can deftly change a single DNA letter. Earlier methods, on the other hand, actually cut the double helix, damaging it and causing whole genes to disappear. “We know much better now what to do,” says Egli. “It doesn’t mean the work is all done, but it’s a very different game now—entirely different.”

Shoestring budget

Embryo editing, which ultimately aims to produce humans with genes tailored by design, is an idea that has been heavily stigmatized and starved of funding. It is illegal in much of the world and is effectively prohibited in the US.

American law forbids the Food and Drug Administration from considering, or even acknowledging, any application it gets to attempt a gene-edited baby. But that rule could be changed, especially if scientists can demonstrate a compelling use of the technique—or perhaps if a billionaire lobbies for it.

In his post, Armstrong included an image of a seven-year-old Pew Research Center poll showing Americans were strongly favorable to altering a baby’s genes if it could treat disease, although the same poll found most opposed experimentation on embryos.

Up until this point, no US company has openly pursued embryo editing, and the federal government doesn’t fund studies on embryos at all. Instead, research on gene editing in embryos has been carried forward in the US by just two academic centers, Egli’s and one at the Oregon Health & Science University.

Those efforts have operated on a shoestring, held together by private grants and university funds. Researchers at those centers said they support the idea of a well-financed company that could advance the technology. “We would honestly welcome that,” says Paula Amato, a fertility doctor at Oregon Health & Science University and the past president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

“More research is needed, and that takes people and money,” she says, adding that she doesn’t mind if it comes from “tech bros.”

Editing embryos can, in theory, be used to correct genetic errors likely to cause serious childhood conditions. But since in most cases genetic testing of embryos can also be used to avoid those errors, most argue it will be hard to find an “unmet need” where the DNA-altering technique is actually necessary.

Instead, many scientists conclude that the bigger market for the technology would be to intervene in embryos in ways that could make humans resistant to common conditions, such as heart disease or Alzheimer’s. But that is more controversial because it’s a type of enhancement, and the changes would also be passed through the generations.

Only last week, several biotech trade and academic groups demanded a 10-year moratorium on heritable human genome editing, saying the technology has few real medical uses and “introduces long-term risks with unknown consequences.”

They said the ability to “program” desired traits or eliminate bad ones risked a new form of “eugenics,” one that would have the effect of “potentially altering the course of evolution.”

No limits

Armstrong did not reply to an email from MIT Technology Review seeking comment about his plans. Nor did his company Coinbase, a cryptocurrency trading platform that went public in 2021 and is the source of his fortune, estimated at $10 billion by Forbes.

The billionaire is already part of a wave of tech entrepreneurs who’ve made a splash in science and biology by laying down outsize investments, sometimes in far-out ideas. Armstrong previously cofounded New Limit, which Bloomberg calls a “life extension venture” and which this year raised a further $130 million to explore methods to reprogram old cells into an embryonic-like state.

He started that company with Blake Byers, an investor who has said a significant portion of global GDP should be spent on “immortality” research, including biotech approaches and ways of uploading human minds to computers.

Then, starting late last year, Armstrong began publicly telegraphing his interest in exploring a new venture, this time connected to assisted reproduction. In December, he announced on X that he and Byers were ready to meet with entrepreneurs working on “artificial wombs,” “embryo editing,” and “next-gen IVF.”

The post invited people to apply to attend an off-the-record dinner—a kind of forbidden-technologies soiree. Applicants had to fill in a Google form answering a few questions, including “What is something awesome you’ve built?”

Among those who attended the dinner was a postdoctoral fellow from Egli’s lab, Stepan Jerabek, who had led the base-editing research project. Another attendee, Lucas Harrington, is a gene-editing scientist who trained at the University of California, Berkeley under Jennifer Doudna, a winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for development of CRISPR gene editing. Harrington says a venture group he helps run, called SciFounders, is also considering starting an embryo-editing company.

“We share an interest in there being a company to empirically evaluate whether embryo editing can be done safely, and are actively exploring incubating a company to undertake this,” Harrington said in an email. “We believe there need to be legitimate scientists and clinicians working to safely evaluate this technology.”

Because of how rapidly gene editing is advancing, Harrington has also criticized bans and moratoria on the technology. These can’t stop it from being applied but, he says, can drive it into “the shadows,” where it might be used less safely. According to Harrington, “several biohacker groups have quietly raised small amounts of capital” to pursue the technology.

By contrast, Armstrong’s public declaration on X represents a more transparent approach. “It seems pretty serious now. They want to put something together,” says Egli, who hopes the Coinbase CEO might fund some research at his lab. “I think it’s very good he posted publicly, because you can feel the temperature, see what reaction you get, and you stimulate the public conversation.”

Editing error

The first reports that researchers were testing CRISPR on human embryos in the lab emerged from China in 2015, causing shock waves as it became clear how easy, in theory, it was to change human heredity. Two years later, in 2017, a report from Oregon claimed successful correction of a dangerous DNA mutation present in lab embryos made from patients’ egg and sperm cells.

But that breakthrough was not what it seemed. More careful testing by Egli and Oregon showed that CRISPR technology actually caused havoc in a cell, often deleting large chunks of chromosomes. That’s in addition to mosaicism, in which edits occur differently in different cells. What looked at first like precise DNA editing was in fact a dangerous process causing unseen damage.

While the public debate turned on the ethics of CRISPR babies—especially after three edited children were born in China—researchers were discussing basic scientific problems and how to solve them.

Since then, both US labs, as well as some in China, have switched to base editing. That method, in theory, could also endow an embryo with a number of advantageous gene variants, not just one change.

Company job

Some researchers also feel certain that editing an embryo is simpler than trying to treat sick adults. The only approved gene-editing treatment, for sickle-cell disease, costs more than $2 million. By contrast, editing an embryo could be incredibly cheap, and if it’s done early, when an embryo is forming, all the body cells could carry the change.

“You fix the text before you print the book,” says Egli. “It seems like a no-brainer.”

Still, gene editing isn’t quite ready for prime time in making babies. Getting there requires more work, including careful design of the editing system (which includes a protein and short guide molecule) and systematic ways to check embryos for unwanted DNA changes. That is the type of industrial effort Armstrong’s company, if he funds one, would be suited to carry out.

“You would have to optimize something to a point where it is perfect, to where it’s a breeze,” says Egli. “This is the kind of work that companies do.”

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A real-estate agent who sells luxury properties in the tristate area is seeing the same thing. “It’s a weird time to be rich right now,” she says. “All the wealthy people I know are keeping their cards closer to the chest.” Sure, maybe they’re a smidge unnerved by the economy’s flashing red warning signs, but they’re largely immune to such things. “When people have that much money, stuff like inflation doesn’t really affect them,” she says. What they do care about, though, is being judged for their conspicuous consumption. “When the whole world is crying poor and you’re living your life in this wealthy bubble, it’s really frowned upon,” she says. They’ve all seen The White Lotus. “No one wants to be like that.”

Obviously, the idea of the über-wealthy wringing their hands about looking too rich is maddening in itself. But many of them don’t know exactly where to turn. One multimillionaire I spoke to, who owns about $15 million in Florida real estate, told me that he’s taking extra precautions to be low-key. “We’re just kind of standing around with our hands in our pockets, not sure what to do,” he says. “We’re not taking any vacations this year. I’d like to, but my wife thinks it’s a better idea to just stay close to home and not spend a lot.” They’re not anxious about their expenses, he says. “It’s more that we don’t want to rub it in people’s faces or draw attention to ourselves.”

Some might even view this swing away from ostentation as an extension of the quiet-luxury trend, but there’s a distinction. These people aren’t going for an IYKYK, old-money aesthetic, which conveys status in its own “tasteful” way; they’re genuinely trying to downplay what they have. It’s not just quiet — it’s silent. In an era of rising economic tension and class rage, a rich person’s privacy has become the ultimate commodity. They don’t want to be seen at the Chanel store. If they go to St.-Tropez, they’ll keep their circle tight.

Cockrell started noticing an undercurrent of nervousness among his clients after the UnitedHealthcare CEO was shot this past December. “I heard a lot of, ‘We’re getting gunned down in the street now,’” he recalls. Then came the inauguration, that striking display of American oligarchy. “There’s been a mood shift since everyone saw that row of billionaires sitting with Trump,” he says. “In times past, wealthy people were considered aspirational figures. Now, it’s more like, ‘If you’re wealthy, you did something wrong. You cannot be a billionaire without being a criminal. The system is stacked against the rest of us.’ And that has gotten louder and louder, and my clients are hearing it, and it’s disturbing to them.”

Katherine Fox, a financial adviser who caters to people who have inherited money (and has inherited money herself), says that many of her clients hide their wealth because they’re worried about how it might be perceived. “A lot of younger inheritors have this huge amount of internalized guilt and fear that has no outlet because they can’t talk about these things with anyone,” she says. “Especially over the past couple of months, when they’re faced with the overwhelming scope of problems in the world, they feel like they should be doing a bigger part to make a difference. But then it’s like, Well, what does that even look like?”

Unlike most of her clients, Fox is public about her inheritance and posts frequently about it online. “I know it’s rage-bait,” she says. “I get a ton of comments like, ‘Eat the rich,’ or ‘Just give it all away.’ But I am careful to moderate the more controversial stuff I post with captions that recognize the privilege and nuance of the situation.” Most people don’t read those, but she’s made her peace with that. “If I was the type of person who was bothered by angry trolls, I could never put myself out there the way I do. But I’m confident enough in what I’m actually saying that I can live with it.”

Her honesty has also been great for her business. Fox used to work in wealth management at Wells Fargo, where she realized that clients with multigenerational wealth — like she also had — came with a unique set of needs, financially and psychologically, that weren’t being met by more traditional advisers. So she broke off and started her own firm, Sunnybranch Wealth, a few years ago. “My impetus was to use my personal and professional expertise to help these people and also to normalize the fact that their problems are real,” she says. “They may only affect the top one percent of the one percent, but they are still problems. It’s just that no one talks about them because it’s not socially acceptable.” Sure, she gets a lot of hateful messages online, but she also hears from fellow inheritors with no one else to talk to. “I’m just the one saying the quiet parts out loud,” she says.

If you’re wondering, she does encourage her clients to donate to charity. “But you can’t just give it all away tomorrow,” she says. “First of all, it’s not that simple. It’s logistically difficult. Then you’re still going to be dealing with the same guilt and uncertainty of, Did I make the right decision?”

Of course, there are plenty of rich people who don’t have any qualms about enjoying their money as visibly as possible, who have even made excess their personal brand. As Cockrell points out, those usually aren’t the types who reach out to him or lie awake at night fearing a Marxist revolution. “Great wealth can make empathy challenging, let’s put it that way,” he says. Studies even show that wealthier people tend to be less compassionate; researchers postulate that it’s because their money insulates them from needing to cultivate and rely on (and care about) their communities. Cockrell notes that many of his clients live cloistered lives, cut off from the economic realities of tariffs and inflation and a looming recession.

He’s also seen that popular sentiment toward the über-rich is cyclical. “The last time the backlash against the wealthy was this strong was probably at the beginning of the pandemic,” he says, alluding to the stark divide between the people who quarantined in their country estates with live-in staff and those who had to risk their lives to deliver takeout. Before that, the lowest moment was probably the Great Recession, when he was just starting his career as a therapist and had a few clients who worked on Wall Street. “Societal attitudes toward the wealthy ebb and flow,” he says. “There will be moments when people get more comfortable, take their diamond bracelet out of the safe and start wearing it again.”

The real danger of times like this, he says, is not that rich people will face actual harm from the ravaging masses. (“Or at least, it’s extremely unlikely,” he clarifies.) Rather, it’s that their fears of public judgment and animosity — no matter how much they might deserve it — drive them further into their sequestered, comfortable worlds, away from a sense of accountability or responsibility. “For a lot of my clients, there’s a degree of confusion. Like, ‘One day I’m looked up to, and the next day, I am vilified. But I haven’t done anything horrible, and nothing has changed. What do I do?’”

The answer, he believes, is encouraging them to understand why regular people might feel so angry about the concentration of wealth, and to get involved in their communities. “I try to get them to be curious and to connect with people outside their orbit. Don’t just write a check — hand out blankets, ladle soup, have an impact, and interact with people in a way that’s meaningful,” he says.

But for some, stepping out of their manicured lives is just too intimidating — or, in this climate, feels too risky. They’d prefer to hole up and retreat into their money instead. “They can lead incredibly isolated lives,” Cockrell says. “It’s not good for anyone.”