Nucleus Launches First Genetically Optimized Embryo

With $32M in total funding, Nucleus CEO Kian Sadeghi joins Molly to discuss the groundbreaking launch of Nucleus Embryo, a genetic optimization software designed to give children the best possible start in life. Kian explains how the software analyzes comprehensive genetic profiles of embryos, helping parents make informed decisions about traits such as disease risks and physical characteristics. The conversation delves into partnerships with companies like Genomic Prediction, the significance of this innovation in the broader context of the fertility crisis, and the ethical considerations and future implications of genetic optimization. Nucleus also touches on the affordability and accessibility of this technology, ensuring it becomes a universal tool for all prospective parents. Molly on X: https://x.com/MollySOShea Kian on X: https://x.com/KianSadeghi5 Visit Nucleus for Embryo, Family Planning, & Health Testing: https://mynucleus.com/ Brought to you by: Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, and travel. As a Sourcery listener, you can unlock up to $500 toward Brex travel or $300 in cash back, plus exclusive perks to help you move even faster: https://brex.com/sourcery Kalshi—The largest prediction market and the only legal platform in the US where people can trade directly on the outcomes of future events: https://kalshi.com/sourcery Fourthwall—The #1 way to sell merch online — Fourthwall is the easiest way to launch a fully branded merch store—used by big brands like MKBHD, Acquired, & even the Smithsonian. 100+ products. No upfront cost. Visit Fourthwall to start today: https://fourthwall.com/ Earn Sourcery Content Rewards: https://whop.com/sourcery/?a=sourcery https://www.sourcery.vc/ Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc/ TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Kian Sadeghi/Nucleus Intro 0:55 - What is Nucleus Embryo? 2:08 - What does genetic optimization for embryos mean? 4:13 - Why is this now possible vs 5 years ago? 6:11 - The current state of fertility 7:48 - Brex feature 10:53 - How does Nucleus fit into the fertility crisis? 12:20 - Why do you think parents still feel like having children is hitting a lottery ticket? 13:18 - The defining moment for the genetics industry 15:46 - What does this all mean for users? 18:09 - How accurate is your analysis? 19:58 - How far can you take picking out traits for your baby? 22:59 - The controversy and ethics around embryonic selection 24:37 - Kian's message to the critics and sceptics 27:04 - Fourthwall feature 27:53 - The goal is to have anyone and everyone to have access to this 29:02 - What's next for Nucleus? 31:25 - What do you think the best AI will be this month? 32:15 - Will DeepSeek be banned in the US this year? 32:50 - How many times will Trump visit Mar-a-lago this month? 33:20 - What will Tim Cook say during the Apple WWDC event? 35:00 - Thank you for coming on the show Kian

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Nucleus Embryo is a genetic optimization software. So usually, parents have a couple viable embryos. And now they can actually take the raw DNA files of them, upload it to Nucleus. And we'll give you analysis on everything from cancers to IQ to eye color to hair color to schizophrenia risk. And so what really we're doing is we're completely empowering the patient with the full genetic profile of their embryos, so they can genetically optimize their children. Sometimes people think DNA is everything, and that's why they're scared of it. DNA is not destiny, and DNA will never be destiny. It's one of many tools that parents use to give their child the best start in life. And I think Nucleus Embryo is going to really bring that technology to everyone.

• 0:37Molly O'Shea?

  Hyun, welcome to Sorcery.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  Thanks, Molly. Thanks for having me.

• 0:40Molly O'Shea?

  I love that we're both matching in our

• 0:43Speaker 00

  I mean, wow.

• 0:44Molly O'Shea?

  Cream knits.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  I mean, I have to say, we coordinated this, didn't we?

• 0:48Molly O'Shea?

  Clearly, we did. Well, more importantly, congratulations on the big launch of Nucleus Embryo. What is Nucleus Embryo and why is this moment so significant?

• 0:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, Nucleus Embryo is a genetic optimization software. So we help parents give their child the best start in life. So usually, parents have a couple viable embryos. And now they can actually take the raw DNA files of them, upload it to Nucleus. And we'll give you analysis on everything from cancers to IQ to eye color to hair color to schizophrenia risk. In other words, we give you the full genetic profile of every one of your embryos. With that, we're excited to announce a couple of things. One is, we've partnered with Genomic Prediction. So Genomic Prediction was one of the first startups that ever actually did genome-wide testing in embryos. We are basically enabling all Genomic Prediction customers to access our embryo software, our genetic optimization software, so they can basically make more thoughtful choices.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  And also, we're excited to announce, this is the first time a couple has partnered, excuse me, this is the first time a company has partnered with a couple who have optimized their embryos on the basis of intelligence. So we have multiple massive announcements today. There was a Wall Street Journal exclusive article that came out. And all around, I think the company is just feeling so, so excited.

• 2:01Molly O'Shea?

  Well, there's a lot to break down there and so much to get into, especially the couple optimizing for IQ. First, I want to get into the genetic optimization software for embryos. What does this actually mean?

• 2:15Speaker 00

  What this means is, you know, parents for the first time ever can give their children the best start in life. So often, you know, the first thing parents think about when they're having healthy children is, how do I not pass down like a rare disease, right? Something like maybe someone's a carrier for cystic fibrosis or something like Huntington's, for example. And then might think, okay, how do I not pass this down to the child? Then they think about maybe other diseases like common diseases, like breast cancer, like heart disease, right? These are conditions that generally speaking are just simply not tested in the clinic today. So let's say you're a couple doing IVF. The first thing that's very well accepted in the IVF context is making sure your child doesn't have any chromosomal abnormalities like Down syndrome, for example. Okay, so that's the first thing.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  Then they might test for rare hereditary diseases, as mentioned, like cystic fibrosis. But then that's it. They don't test for common diseases like cancers or heart disease or schizophrenia. They don't run any more sophisticated modeling of genetic prediction on things like IQ or height, for example. And so what really we're doing is we're completely empowering the patient with the full genetic profile of their embryos so they can genetically optimize their children.

• 3:25Molly O'Shea?

  To put some numbers against that, what does that mean in terms of like how many embryos you can optimize at once or how many actual conditions there are?

• 3:36Speaker 00

  Usually couples have, you know, three to five viable embryos. So they would take these viable embryos that go to their IVF clinic. Maybe they use genomic predictions and PGTP test and they basically request the files from the clinic. They get these three to five files, they upload it to Nucleus and then Nucleus will analyze these files across literally everything, across, you know, diseases and traits, as mentioned. And then basically, parents have to choose. You actually, it's very easy to, we analyze the embryos and then you can very easily sort them, you can compare them, you do all these things, and then you can pick the one you want implanted.

• 4:10Molly O'Shea?

  I guess more seriously, like, why now and why you? Like, why do you think that it's capable now that you're able to do all this technological advancement? Versus, let's say, like, five years ago.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  One of the big things about Nucleus is preventive medicine. If you think about it, this is the greatest manifestation of preventive medicine. It is, you know, the genome is the foundation of health. We always say that. It's the foundation of life. It's the inception. If you go back and think, what is the single greatest way to reduce disease incidence? What is the single greatest way for a baby to live a long and healthy life? It's to go back to their DNA. And so I really see the launch of our embryo analysis product as an expansion and greater manifestation of our vision of a more preventative-based medical system, one where people are empowered to live longer. We really champion at Nucleus something called generational health. Generational health is this idea that you do a genetic test, not just for yourself and your own health, right?

• 5:06Speaker 00

  But for your parents, for your children, and their children. And I think you're seeing the rise of this kind of reproductive genetic stack forming, right? Parents came to Nucleus to do preconception testing, to see if they're a carrier for anything. And then if they were and they weren't a genetic match, or even if they, you know, whether they're a genetic match or not, they said, okay, maybe I want to do IVF now. And I want to now test my embryos, right? In other words, you can kind of see how adult testing, you know, genetic matching, which we launched a couple of months ago, led naturally to then embryonic analysis. And so you see this testing from preconception to conception. And now, even after birth, we're going to be exploring as well. And this reproductive stack is all genetically based. It's all genetically informed.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  And the embryo's DNA file is the same as an adult DNA's file. So we're taking the most cutting-edge analysis and models that exist and applying it to embryos. And so when you think about it, this made perfect sense, not just technologically speaking, but fitting the ethos of our business of building a dramatically new, preventative-based medical system.

• 6:10Molly O'Shea?

  I think it's important to take a step back and actually understand how important this moment is in the grand scheme of fertility. There are, like, significant shifts in the US for fertility. It seems commonplace now that couples are freezing eggs, that they're using IVF. And even broader than that, there's declining birth rates worldwide. Could you put some data behind all this? What is the current state of fertility?

• 6:37Speaker 00

  Well, you make a great point. First off, birth rates are declining. IVF is becoming much more commonplace. I mean, I think the statistic is that one in 50 babies today are born via IVF. That would be crazy to say a couple of decades ago. I mean, at some point, IVF babies were, you know, test tube babies, right? Now it's just how people have children. And you can imagine as it becomes easier and easier, maybe you take stem cells to make an egg or sperm, as it becomes easier and easier and less invasive to make an embryo, you can imagine that IVF is going to become more and more ubiquitous. And it's interesting because, you know, I always talk about the decreasing cost of whole genome sequencing. What used to be a billion dollars is now a couple hundred dollars.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  That obviously DNA being the generational health tool that it is, doesn't just impact adults and longevity, but also impacts fertility. And so you're going to see the rapid decrease in cost of IVF combined with the rapid decrease in cost of sequencing a genome. These things are going to converge together to enable this just, this massive, massive new generation of parents having genetically optimized children.

• 7:44Molly O'Shea?

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• 8:29Molly O'Shea?

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• 8:48Molly O'Shea?

  Could you draw that out a little bit further?

• 8:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, so a couple of things are happening in the context of the broader reproductive world. So one is people are having births later. As you know, intuitively, you already know this, women are having children much later on in life, and that means more and more women are opting for IVF. IVF is very expensive. I think the statistic is that's around $25,000 per cycle, which is pretty crazy. And with that, I think it's 2.8 million people, 2.8 million people in the United States have genetic disease. So think about that, all the pain, all the suffering that exists because of genetics, and we have the tools today. We have the tools today combining preconception screening, and it can be with or without IVF,

• 9:32Speaker 00

  to actually, basically, help millions, literally millions of lives to prevent genetic disease. And so when I think about the broader reproductive transformation, you're seeing basically the rise of IVF, you're seeing the cost coming down, you're seeing sequencing costs coming down, and you're seeing women especially who want to have children later on in life. And so this technology, and also on that point too, there was actually a really good study that was done asking couples about genetic optimization, which is what's their perspective on it? And in the study, it said over 50% of people said genetic optimization for something like IQ is fine. And then I think four of 10 people said if they could genetically optimize their children

• 10:17Speaker 00

  to get into a better college, they would do so.

• 10:19Molly O'Shea?

  Wow.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's not crazy. And I think it's interesting because genetics is another tool. Sometimes people think DNA is everything, and that's why they're scared of it. DNA is not destiny, and DNA will never be destiny. It's one of many tools that parents use to give their child the best day in life. It should be thought of as another medical intervention, a vaccine, sending your kid to the best school. It's just another tool in the toolkit, and I think Nucleus Enviro is going to really bring that technology to everyone.

• 10:46Molly O'Shea?

  It's still like a very early category like this was something seen as sci fi and many of your announcements always seem like sci fi, but it is reality now and something that people haven't actually considered and so maybe the education on it might be limited, but I'm just curious, how does Nucleus fit into this broader fertility crisis and how are you educating people that these tools do exist?

• 11:11Speaker 00

  One of the core pillars we have is customer obsession. So I think what makes us different than a lot of other IVF genetic testing companies is there's a lot of technical improvements, but even beyond that, we're for you. We build software for you. Doctors and physicians, unfortunately, they have the key today on people's embryos. If you go and talk to fertility clinics, if you go talk to doctors, right now, the doctor is the one that basically gate keeps and controls what information couples can access about their own children. And so going back and kind of paralyzing this to the adult testing world, which you know, today Nucleus is known for, in the same way often doctors will gate

• 11:53Speaker 00

  keep genetic tests for adults, it's even to more extreme extent in the context of embryos. Because other people will make value judgments for couples on what information they should and shouldn't get. We completely reject that. We believe that every piece of information from cancer to IQ to schizophrenia belongs very thoughtfully in the hands of the patient and the patient is the one, not the doctor, that the patient is the one that should pick their embryo.

• 12:18Molly O'Shea?

  Why do you think that parents still feel like having children is hitting a lottery ticket?

• 12:25Speaker 00

  Well, look, I think people are having children much later on, right? And IVF is a hard process. I mean, I think IVF takes a big toll on the woman's body and it's expensive. It can be demoralizing, right? If you have a miscarriage or the like. And so it's totally understandable that by the time you have a couple viable embryos, you would want to get any amount of information you can possibly get to basically pick your baby. I think that, you know, IVF is something that it's going to eventually get less invasive, but today it is still pretty invasive and it's still pretty expensive. And so I really think a technology like Nucleus Embryo will help couples have even more confidence when they're

• 13:07Speaker 00

  making that choice, that, you know, they're giving their child the best possible start in life.

• 13:13Molly O'Shea?

  A part of your announcement was on your partnership with genomic prediction. So what does this mean for the industry and how did you guys start working together?

• 13:22Speaker 00

  I think this is a defining moment for the genetics industry. And the reason for that is because of what you said. We're going full stack, baby. Everything from adults all the way to conception, all the way beyond to birth. The genetic stack is forming. The reproductive stack is forming. One of my visions I had five years ago is I realized that, you know, you know, there, there, sometimes people think of the genetics industry. It's like, oh, there's 23andMe and ancestry, which are kind of like gimmicks. They do genealogy. Then there's like clinical testing companies like Natera or Myriad Genetics that are like very serious and will test your risk for, you know, cancers. And then there's pharmacogenomics companies, which will tell you how your DNA affects your metabolism, different drugs. And then there's also IVF genetic testing companies. And these things today are viewed as all separate.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Here's the thing, and we will show this to be true. They are all the same. Because fundamentally, through the rise of the whole genome test, you can actually combine every single one of these applications. You can combine, you know, kind of ancestry, Natera, Myriad, IVF genetic testing companies, PGX companies, all into one roof, into one house. Because again, principally, the, the, we're an adult DNA testing company today, but it's the same models that you use to analyze adult DNA than embryo DNA. Because obviously embryos grow up to be adults, right? It's the same DNA. DNA is the, you know, language of life. And so I think what, what the genomic prediction partnership is showing is this full stack. And with that also, I think, you know,

• 14:48Speaker 00

  what it means to the genetics companies being redefined, which I, which I find, I take great joy in, right? There's nothing more satisfying to me as an entrepreneur than the bearishness today on the D to C market. Because they go, 23andMe failed, though 23andMe failed. What do you think about it? What do you think about it? I think, you know, you're asking me, why did the horse carriage company fail? It failed because it's, it's run by horses. You know, I have a Bugatti on the road, you know? And eventually the world's going to see that. And I think with this announcement, people are going to start seeing that because generally people don't associate a company like 23andMe with an IVF genetic testing company. Well, I mean, what do these things have to do? But now the technology's powered. Enough that these things are one of the same and we couldn't be more excited to partner with genomic prediction. We couldn't be more excited to send and recommend our patients to do IVF with

• 15:32Speaker 00

  GP. They're the oldest player in the space. They have by far the best technology in terms of testing embryos. And so we're just so excited to continue to grow that stack and provide what we really see as generational health.

• 15:46Molly O'Shea?

  And what does that mean for users and their onboarding experience?

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it means a couple of things. So there's kind of a couple of paths here. Often what happens is someone will come and do nucleus family. So nucleus family is our preconception test. You can see if you're a genetic match with your partner. Once you do that, and let's say you're not a match, you can actually then do IVF to actually make sure you don't pass down that rare condition to your future child. So I get the question a lot, which is, oh, well, Kian, what do I do if, you know, I'm a carrier for cystic fibrosis and so is my partner? Then, like, am I screwed? Like, what can I do? Like, that's why maybe you don't even want to do the test. That's actually the beginning of solving that problem, right? You love your partner, turns out you're both a carrier for cystic fibrosis, no problem. Now we can refer you to our partner at genomic prediction, and then you can use the analysis technology to actually then pick the embryo without that condition. Then you can take those embryo files and actually

• 16:35Speaker 00

  run them back on nucleus and then pick the one that is optimized to your preferences. So you can see, Molly, how this stack is forming, where people come to nucleus and then we actually send them to genomic prediction. Similarly, someone will go to genomic prediction and the first step of any IVF process is preconception testing. Preconception just means before, you know, conceiving before there's an embryo, where you just get mom and dad. It's basically nucleus family, right? So genomic prediction will actually send those patients to us. And so now you can see again this stack forming. And I really think in the history of genetics, I really believe this, it's going to be one of the most defining partnerships that existed. Because eventually, you're not just going to be sequencing and analyzing DNA, you'll also probably be editing it as well. And, you know, that, it's funny, because in the Wall Street Journal article,

• 17:20Speaker 00

  I'm not sure how many, I'm not sure how many people, you know, saw that, but

• 17:25Speaker 00

  I was doing gene editing eight years ago, right? In a do-it-yourself genetic laboratory. And there's a lot of parallels with that as well. When I was doing that gene editing work, a lot of people said, "Oh, it's controversial. Oh, you know, you shouldn't have access to this technology." But what I learned is, when I used that technology, when I used CRISPR, it taught me more about the technology than any reading I could have possibly done. And in using that technology, the laboratory set up the ethical frameworks that then I could operate within. So with Nucleus, I intend to do the same thing. The best way to educate parents about genetics and what genetics means and what genetic analysis means is by putting it in their hands. And that is exactly what we're going to do, and doing it in a very thoughtful, careful, and deliberate way. DNA is not destiny. It's one piece of the puzzle, and that's exactly what we tell the patient.

• 18:09Molly O'Shea?

  What are the specific categories of traits and conditions that you're analyzing? How accurate are these predictions?

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the different categories ranges from cancers to like, you know, heart conditions to like mental health conditions to like, something like physical characteristics like height or eye color or like hair color. And regarding the predictability of the models, there's a large range depending on how genetic something is. For example, people might intuitively guess that something like height, right? Height, you would probably guess, you probably guess that's pretty genetic, right? You look at mom and dad, you're like, "Okay, this thing is like pretty genetic," which it is, right? And so that model tends to be a very good, strong model. Let's say something like depression. Depression's dramatically more environmentally driven, right, than height. And with that, you would expect that model to be dramatically worse.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  And so DNA isn't deterministic, and that's actually not a bug, that's a feature, right? Obviously, DNA, if it could predict everything, then there would be no free will, right? But it can't. And so one of the things that we're really careful in doing is, we actually tell patients when they're using our services, which models are better, which models are worse. And the way we present results to patients always takes this into account in that if a model has lower genetic predictability, you would basically see the deviation or the prediction of the model to be mostly driven by non-genetic pieces of information. That might be a little bit too Technical, but what I'm basically principally saying here is that genetic models are highly useful today.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  And there's a range of them and different phenotypes or different traits or different diseases are driven to a different degree by genetics. And we communicate that to the patient, we, we, we express the limitations of the results to the patient. And the patient can take the results and make the choice that they find best for their family.

• 19:57Molly O'Shea?

  How far can you take picking out traits, though? Like, can you make an Elon Musk baby or a Kylie Jenner baby?

• 20:04Speaker 00

  No, you can't. You can. So, one of the most important things to understand is that when you are doing embryo selection, right? The possible embryos you have is based off your partner. Okay, so the most important decision actually is who's your partner, right? Like, if you want like a really smart baby, you should probably marry someone that's really smart, right? If you want a really tall baby, you should probably marry someone that's really tall. Because the embryo selection will always be a relative optimization, right? IQ can explain a couple IQ points, right? Height, you can, you know, explain a couple inches, but principally, if you, the most important kind of, the ingredients for your embryos comes from mom and dad. Right? So that's like by far the most important decision. Embryo selection is always a relative optimization. But even though it's a relative optimization, it can still be a highly useful relative optimization, right?

• 20:48Speaker 00

  You can still dramatically reduce a baby's risk, for example, for something like Alzheimer's, which is then strongly associated with longevity. Or breast cancer, or coronary heart disease, which are the top killers in the United States today. And so, all this to be said is that, you know, you can't make Elon, which I don't even know if you want to make Elon. You can't make Elon. But you can give your baby the best start in life. It's an important tool and it's going to become only more prevalent.

• 21:10Molly O'Shea?

  And how does nucleus embryo differ from what fertility clinics are already offering?

• 21:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a lot of things. So fertility clinics, generally speaking, they're focused on really, really severe genetic diseases. So like Down syndrome, for example, or like a rare hereditary disease like cystic fibrosis or Tay-Sachs or Huntington's, right? They don't venture into the world of what, what kills most people, which is chronic conditions. Things like cancers, things like Alzheimer's, things like Parkinson's, things like heart disease, right? They also do not veer into the land of traits. From our perspective as a company, there's really No difference between diseases and traits. It's a false line in the sand that was drawn. What do I mean by that? Think about height, right? The extreme enough version of height is, you know, Marfan syndrome. It's a disease. On the other end of height is dwarfism, also a disease.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  In other words, you know, trying to kind of say, oh, this is, uh, uh, this is disease and this is trait. And this is allowed, this isn't. It's completely arbitrary. The most important thing for us is that we do everything above board. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. We operate by transparency. Everyone has access to all the information. All the limitations are there, all the probabilities are there. And then patients can basically go from very kind of rigid and, and, and I would say, um, very limited set of really, really bad hereditary diseases to everything, to diseases, to traits. And maybe, you know, there's a family who has a family history of schizophrenia. Today, they can't weed that out or attempt to contribute to weed that out of their, um, future child. Tomorrow with nucleus embryo, they can't.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  And so I really think that this is just a natural evolution for the industry in moving away from kind of arbitrary lines and saying what people should have access to and shouldn't have access to. And that's one of the reasons why we're so patient centric, because we don't believe the doctor should hold the keys to your embryos.

• 22:59Molly O'Shea?

  I mean, it still is very quiet. I mean, not to pull like too far of a comparison, but most people know about genetically modified agriculture or like dog breeding and that sort of kind of selection. But how do you think about this in terms of quote unquote, like designer babies and the controversy that surrounds it?

• 23:18Speaker 00

  I think that, you know, embryonic selection today, if you look at what's actually going on is you have a couple viable embryos. And basically parents will pick the embryos completely randomly.

• 23:32Speaker 00

  And I find that, um, like kind of crazy, like it's the most arguably one of the most important decisions of your entire life. What a baby you're going to implant, your future child, and you pick randomly. And, and so I think, um, what we're really doing is giving people more information to then be able to say, okay, I actually prefer this embryo over this one, maybe because it has dramatically less Alzheimer's risk. That's what this is really about. It's about just people having. Healthy children and, you know, picking the best baby in their mind, whatever that means to them of the options they had. I do think that, you know, over time, this is really powerful technology. I think genetic testing technology, analysis technology, genome technology, if you will, is going to be as powerful as artificial intelligence.

• 24:12Speaker 00

  Artificial intelligence is ultimately a tool and it's a tool that's going to, I think, be most consequential in the field of human genomics. Right? Because DNA is life. It's literally, you know, it's, it explains everything. It's how we all begin. I think part of our job is to be really responsible stewards of this powerful technology. And the best way in our mind of doing that is by actually not hiding in the ivory tower, by putting in everyday people's hands.

• 24:36Molly O'Shea?

  So what, what would you say to the critics? Like, there's definitely going to be some misconceptions around this. It is newer science that's out in the public. And I'm sure there's going to be some heat. I know that there's definitely some heat with IQ.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:50Molly O'Shea?

  Testing before, but what do you think?

• 24:53Speaker 00

  I think that ultimately this technology belongs in the hands of people and people are going to decide whether they want to use it or not. I think really that sunlight is the best disinfectant. I think really saying, hey, here's what this technology can do. Here's what the technology cannot do. And making it accessible, making it cheap, making it beautiful, putting it in everyone's hands. Educating people, empowering people, making customers a stakeholder, right? Doing that, if someone then decides they don't want to use the technology, that's absolutely their right. But the person who's not using the technology, in my belief, should not determine whether someone else should use the technology. Right? Because it's ultimately up to the individuality and the liberty of the couple.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  And so I think a lot of questions on, you know, a lot of critics, you know, what they're going to say. I think it fundamentally comes down to kind of, it's my choice. It's my choice. If I want to use this technology and the technology is being used in a thoughtful, ethical way, and it has scientific integrity, which it does. Then all that, if that's all there, then I think people absolutely have the right to use it. And I think you're going to see a broader movement away from, people maybe publicly might criticize me or the business or Nucleus. But then I, I'm almost positive privately, people want to, you know, email us and say, hey, how can I use the software? Because I've seen it. I've seen it. People are scared to speak up and say, hey, I actually think this is okay. And I'm going to say that it is perfectly okay to say, I don't want my baby to have a rare disease.

• 26:18Speaker 00

  I don't want my baby to have a greater incidence for breast cancer. I don't want my baby, you know. To have schizophrenia. These are all things that are okay to say. And moreover, if you want to optimize for a couple IQ points, if you want to optimize for you to be slightly taller or have brown eyes. What is it to me? In fact, if you actually look at the way people have picked egg donors and sperm donors, you find that they pick based off. People all don't go the same direction. They have different value frameworks. They have different miles of the world and they pick dramatically different egg donors. And so the same is going to be true today. People are going to pick based off of different, their different values. And I think that's beautiful. I mean, the technology belongs in the hands of the people. It belongs in the hands of people making their own choices, couples making their own choices. And I think the worst thing to do is try to take that away from a couple.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  All we're doing is empowering these patients and making them stakeholders.

• 27:05Speaker 02

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• 27:48Molly O'Shea?

  A second order consequence of that would be, do you think that this might deepen the social divide? Like for people that can't afford optimization and who can't?

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a great question. I think the ethos of a Silicon Valley startup is making technology ubiquitous and available for everyone. Right? At some point, the iPhone was too expensive. Only investment bankers had it. Now everyone has it. At some point, Teslas were too expensive. Now there's a $30,000 car. In other words, the internet too, started off as a government project. The whole genome too. It was a billion dollars and now it's mass accessible. The success of Nucleus is the success of ubiquitization. The success of Nucleus is a world where anyone, anywhere, no matter the background, can access this technology. It's funny, when you talk to the dystopian people, they will always say, oh, but some people have access to technology, some people won't. Well, we're working on solving that problem. You know, while they're complaining and saying, oh, some people have access, some people don't.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  We're making sure that every single person, no matter your background, no matter where you're from, and no matter how much money you have, can access the analysis, can access the tech. And our success as a business, the startup's success as a business hinges on that. And so I think we're going to continue to scale and show people that, you know, anyone can have access to this.

• 28:59Molly O'Shea?

  As we wrap up, I like to draw out two separate segments. So one, drawing off of this, what are your outlooks for the year? Like, what comes next for Nucleus? You guys are dropping news like every month, it seems like.

• 29:14Speaker 00

  We're, I'm very proud of the team. We're shipping a lot. The team is fantastic. We're on a tear, honestly.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  We have a lot of exciting stuff coming up. I mean, I do want to say that when you think about Nucleus, I think people are starting to see us for what we are, which is, it's well beyond a genetics company.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  Generational health, this concept of building tools, not just for adults, but also children, and then the kind of, yet like literal, you know, inextricability of that, it doesn't exist. There is no precedent. There is no one that has really tackled this generational health component. And when you think about the next 10 years, you know, as I alluded to earlier, sequencing technology is kind of cheaper, analysis is kind of cheaper, understanding the genome is going to dramatically increase, and genome editing is going to become much cheaper. And so you see all these technologies formed together into something that I really believe is a trillion-dollar business. But really, for me, it's about two things.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  It's about the sincerity of my love for this, just, I love it. I love this discipline. I love, I love kind of, you know, the bits and atoms in that world, but also about the customer. I always think about my cousin, you know, who, she went to sleep one day and she died. And I think, well, a swab could have saved her life.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  And when I think about that, I think, oh, my God, this needs to be in everyone's hands. And so, you know, I'm doing this for her and, and, and hopefully there's someone somewhere that uses the technology and, and maybe their embryo, you know, 20 years now doesn't get breast cancer. And, you know, you won't get credit for that, but that's beautiful. Right. The, the, the fact that the molecular kind of incontrollable factors that will impact someone's disease risk, if that can slowly be kind of mitigated. I mean, that's amazing. I think that's the most beautiful thing. If you can have, you know, instead of someone getting Alzheimer's 80 years now, think about that, you can make a selection today that instead of getting Alzheimer's at age 60, right, you just don't. I mean, that, that to me is phenomenal. Right. The fact that you can do that in the nucleus embryo application and just at a click of a button.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 31:21Molly O'Shea?

  That is beautiful. That's a lot of meaning and purpose and drive behind the mission. And also you're going to help hopefully millions of people.

• 31:28Speaker 00

  God willing.

• 31:30Molly O'Shea?

  I know you have lots of opinions on things. So while you're here, not to make too hard of a pivot, but I want to get your opinion on a couple of these Kalshi sheets.

• 31:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 31:39Molly O'Shea?

  Okay. So on Kalshi, I want to know from your side, technologist, frontier tech.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 31:46Molly O'Shea?

  Okay. What do you think the best AI will be this month?

• 31:50Speaker 00

  Um, so I'm biased here because I principally use chat GPT, chat GPT. So I'm going to say chat GPT, but I'm sure Kalshi has disagreement with me, probably.

• 32:00Molly O'Shea?

  No, I think you're, I think you're in the running.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 32:02Molly O'Shea?

  Right now it's out about, uh, oh, no, no, you're not.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  I'm not.

• 32:06Molly O'Shea?

  Chat GPT is about like 17%.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  God damn, what, what is Gemini dropping?

• 32:10Molly O'Shea?

  I don't know. Gemini is pretty hot right now.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  Jesus. Okay.

• 32:14Molly O'Shea?

  Um, do you think DeepSeek will be banned in the US?

• 32:17Speaker 00

  I think it should be probably.

• 32:18Molly O'Shea?

  Why?

• 32:19Speaker 00

  I mean, I always think about these things in the context of sequencing, which is like, you know, everything we do in the United States on US machines, because I can't fully trust ever using something international, just because you just don't know. I, I, I think the strategy of like making AI open source and then like kind of, you know, some, and then like just basically releasing it across the world could be a very intelligent strategy to try to gain like soft influence and soft power. That'd be my take.

• 32:45Molly O'Shea?

  Even if it's downloaded locally?

• 32:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I skeptical.

• 32:48Molly O'Shea?

  Okay. Um, how many times do you think Trump will visit Mar-a-Lago this month?

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Well, it's the month of June, right?

• 32:54Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Is he going to be vibing this month? I don't know. Is he stressed?

• 32:59Speaker 00

  At least once, presumably. What is the betting market say?

• 33:04Molly O'Shea?

  I mean, zero is at 74% right now. Yeah, 1 is at 27%.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  Okay, that sounds like there's some alpha there. I mean, how often does he generally go to Mar-a-Lago? I thought he goes a bunch. No?

• 33:13Molly O'Shea?

  I don't know. We gotta look into this.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  We gotta look into this. This is important stuff.

• 33:16Molly O'Shea?

  Lastly, okay, WWDC is coming up. What do you think Tim Cook is gonna say at the Apple event?

• 33:23Molly O'Shea?

  Is he gonna mention Siri, MacBook Pro, Vision OS 3?

• 33:27Speaker 00

  I would hope that he would launch some AI-native hardware device, but he's not gonna do that. I wouldn't bet on that. That's what I would hope. I mean, I just think like, if you're Tim Cook right now, you're kinda like, okay, there's clearly something that's gonna come that's gonna disrupt my entire business. The hardest thing is when you're making a trillion dollars to cut the golden goose. But he knows it's a problem. You see what OpenAI is doing with Johnny Eyes? It's just like a direct assault on you. I feel like if you're Tim Cook, you gotta release the beast, you know? There's no way Tim Cook is not a killer. Have you seen that man? He's a killer. It's always the people that are a little bit more like down-to-earth that are like, yeah, I'm a very nice, like, folksy person that's like, well, you know, we'll like, get you. And so I'm a little bit like, if he, if he, I don't know, I feel like he should maybe just let it rip and be like,

• 34:11Speaker 00

  "We're building the AI heart, like, native device and like, it's gonna launch like, you know, instead of whatever." I think OpenAI said next year. I would try to like, launch it ahead of time or something. I don't know.

• 34:19Molly O'Shea?

  We'll see. I don't know.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  I will say that, you know, obviously, Apple's 50,000 times our size. But one thing I learned being CEO of a smaller, of a much smaller company is that you never know what the CEO has to deal with. And actually, sometimes it's just like a lot of distractions. Because like, the most important things, like, sometimes go unnoticed. The hardest thing is to like, do the most important thing like, every single day. Right? Like, if you're Tim Cook, like, think about how much money there is that like, distracts you from like, what you actually should be doing. So, I don't know, Tim Cook, I don't know, is he a fan of this podcast? But maybe I'll give unsolicited business advice. Because what the hell do I know? He's a huge fan. Is he Apple's a sponsor?

• 34:57Molly O'Shea?

  Coming soon.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  Coming soon.

• 35:00Molly O'Shea?

  All right, well, Keon, it was a pleasure to have you on. Big congratulations again. I can't wait to see more announcements coming up this year.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  Thanks, Molly.

• 35:06Molly O'Shea?

  Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.