Core Memory

Dina Radenkovic has set out to reshape women’s health.Gameto, her start-up based in Austin, has spent the last four years working on stem cell engineering technology that it expects to aim at things ranging from fertility treatments to menopause. On the fertility front, Gameto already has a product called Fertilo that reduces the time women must go through painful, hormonal injections from two weeks down to a couple of days. It’s been approved for use in several countries and is being studied now in

In this episode, we’re joined by the test pilot Elliot Seguin to learn what it’s like to put your life on the line on a regular basis. Unlike most of the people in his profession, Seguin did not do the whole Top Gun-style military training. He earned his status as a test pilot the hard way by putting in the hours flying all kinds of aircraft and convincing people to give him a go in their birds. He’s an engineer. A racer. And a brave and possibly nuts soul. We talk with Seguin about the test pilot

Fresh off closing a $200 million funding round, Ben Lamm from Colossal Biosciences - now valued at more than $10 billion - joins Core Memory - now valued at less than $10 billion - to talk about bringing extinct animals back to our fair planet. The company has set to work on woolly mammoths, the dodo bird, and the thylacine (aka Tasmanian Tiger) in its effort to restore animals and ecosystems. To pull this off, Colossal must develop a host of gene editing technologies and artificial wombs, and we

A few weeks ago, I went out to Zipline’s test facility in Half Moon Bay, California for a dinner and to see their delivery drones in action. I was not expecting much. It feels like we’ve been promised delivery drones for years and years. And, in fact, we have. These visions of the future don’t always arrive on schedule, but the delivery drones were feeling extra tardy. I also wasn’t even sure if delivery drones made that much sense. Drones run loud. They could obviously crash into things. It’s hard

Sam Altman has placed a few very large bets. There’s OpenAI, of course, and Helion Energy for fusion; World (fka Worldcoin) for finance and identity; and then Retro Bio for longevity.In late 2023, I did the first deep dive on Retro’s technology and Altman’s $180 million investment in the company. Along the way, I got to know the Retro co-founder and CEO Joe Betts-LaCroix and have spent a lot of time following Retro’s work since. Betts-LaCroix has an unusual background and an original philosophy on

Here we have the dulcet sounds of neural net pioneer and all around AI guru Geoff Hinton, as interviewed by your truly. The incomparable Ryan Manning appears as host and eccentric archivist. Enjoy. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ashleevance.substack.com