Stripe, Anthropic, and OpenAI are backing an effort to stop respiratory infections
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- Stripe is funding Intercept, a new $500 million nonprofit whose goal is preventing the common cold and flu, with the eventual aim of eliminating respiratory viruses altogether.
- Intercept's funders include Stripe, Anthropic, Flu Lab, the OpenAI Foundation, Bill Gates, and traders at quantitative investing firm Jane Street Capital.
- Intercept will use grants and investments to back prevention approaches including vaccines and large-scale air-cleaning systems for schools, offices, and other public spaces.
- Nan Ransohoff, the Stripe executive leading the initiative, said people spend about 5% of their lifetime fighting a cold or flu, and that drug companies have underinvested because colds are caused by more than 200 different viruses.
- The project draws on post-COVID scientific tools including RNA drugs, antibodies, and computational protein design — including engineered virus-grabbing proteins that could be sprayed in nasal passages to trap viruses before infection.
- Intercept's advisors include former top FDA official Peter Marks and Moncef Slaoui, the pharmaceutical executive who led Operation Warp Speed.
- The effort mirrors Stripe's prior Frontier program, a $1.8 billion carbon-removal initiative that Ransohoff calls a model for tackling problems that are 'technically possible' but 'lack commercial incentives.'
Why it matters: By pooling $500 million from Big Tech and billionaire donors around a problem pharma considers uneconomical, Stripe is creating a new philanthropy model for prevention science. The bet: post-COVID tools like RNA drugs, computational protein design, and nasal virus-trapping sprays can finally outmaneuver the 200+ viruses behind the common cold.
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