It’s been a challenging period to be a scientist — and it’s only gotten harder. Hyper-competition for shrinking grant dollars, prestigious journals swamped with publications, permadoc hell that stunts career progression, and administrative overhead that seems to expand every year have all made a life dedicated to science a tough one. Compound those problems by sudden funding cuts and the crisis of higher education, and it’s little wonder that scientists are increasingly running toward alternative careers.

Alternatives aren’t the answer though. America can’t afford its best minds abandoning the frontiers of discovery. Our country is in a race to be the first to unlock the future and ensure that the world stays open, fair, and democratized this century. We can’t allow the brilliant research of our scientists to lie abandoned on the lab bench, discarded because of negligence to fix the problems plaguing the field.

As the public sector pulls back, the private sector must bridge the gap. That’s why we are deepening our work on Lux Labs, by committing at least $100 million of additional funding to create and launch new ventures based on the hard work of academic scientists.

Lux Labs is a helpline for every scientist confronting their own crossroads. We are offering both counsel and currency to the most pathbreaking scientists we can find and help push their research and careers forward. Our focus is on the scientists themselves. Can their research be continued through joining a private startup or creating a new one? Is there a way to transfer to another lab with more stable funding or even well-funded corporate R&D groups? The goal is the same: help accelerate American science by saving and investing in the scientists who make it all happen.

We know that many scientists have never considered the entrepreneurial route. Many others may dream one day of spinning out their ideas into a commercial enterprise but believe that the time isn’t right. Maybe their research is still on-going, or they haven’t secured a co-founder or partner, or they think they need to package their ideas further to secure investor interest.

We want to assuage these concerns. What we have learned from more than two decades of investing between science fiction and science fact is that the world is often far readier to accept superlative new ideas than their inventors are willing to share them. Scientists are rightly inculcated with a persistent self-doubt: always one more experiment, one more check of the data. We, on the other hand, don’t doubt them.

We officially launched Lux Labs last year to institutionalize a method we have used to build some of the most original and important scientific enterprises in the world, like Kurion in nuclear waste cleanup, Osmo in digital olfaction, and Variant Bio in unearthing genetic outliers to advance therapies. Through Lux Labs, we help scientists take their inventions and navigate the thicket of challenges required to kick-start research-intensive businesses, from incorporation, technology-transfer licensing, first hires, immigration strategies, and constructing scientific advisory boards to building real depth on the cap table. We are also working to galvanize our investing peers as a force multiplier to create syndicates of venture support for science. 

We have already partnered to commercialize the discoveries of an extraordinary roster of academic pioneers, from MIT materials virtuoso Angela Belcher to Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators such as Charles Zuker (Columbia) and Huda Y. Zoghbi (Baylor College of Medicine). Our Nobel laureate collaborators include neuro-olfaction trailblazer Richard Axel (Columbia), super-resolution microscopist Eric Betzig (HHMI Janelia), protein-design architect David Baker (University of Washington), neuro-endocrinology pathfinder Holly Ingraham (UCSF), silicon-photonics pioneer Axel Scherer (Caltech), optoelectronics legend Eli Yablonovitch (UC Berkeley), nanocrystal innovator Paul Alivisatos (UC Berkeley), CRISPR co-inventor Feng Zhang (MIT/Broad), and many more. Each illustrates how Lux Labs translates world-class science into companies that matter. 

Now, we want to open our doors even wider by helping scientists with urgent counsel earlier in this process. Perhaps a grant just got cut: what are the alternatives? Maybe a visa didn’t get renewed: could our global network of scientists and peers find another way forward? Perhaps a result has been validated but is still conceptually very early: are there ways to structure and fund a private company to realize the research?

We don’t want a scientist with a burning passion for the future of their field to be waylaid in their pursuit, undermining America’s standing in the world. We know that venture capital and private industry can’t solve every problem, but it actually does consistently deliver on one promise: long-horizon funding that provides a crucial link between idea and execution. We’ve seen time and time again that patient capital coupled with impatient scientists looking to catalyze their work for the entire world is a powerful combination.

It’s a combination we need more of — and soon — because the Chinese Communist Party has a singular objective this century: unseat America’s sci-tech dominance and eliminate America’s global influence. To accomplish that mission, the Party must rapidly upgrade China’s cutting-edge knowledge production while systematically undermining America’s key science institutions.

The former is already well underway. The Chinese Communist Party’s “2035 Science & Technology Vision” states, unapologetically, that “original innovation is the sharpest blade.” It couples that declaration with vast subsidies, talent visas, and procurement guarantees which, in concert, have helped the country take the lead in 37 of 44 critical and emerging technologies.

Upending American science seemed an impossible order. Constructed by visionaries like Vannevar Bush in the ashes of World War II and propelled forward by brilliant legislative action like the Bayh-Dole Act, America managed to build the impossible: an open scientific enterprise that could simultaneously probe into the furthest frontiers while translating the most original insights uncovered into the most prosperous companies in the world. Regularly copied and always envied, but never rivaled.

If the Politburo were drafting America’s self-sabotage plan, they would politicize science and freedom of inquiry, burden researchers with excess administrativia, starve young and ambitious investigators of funding, and discourage the world’s best minds from immigrating. 

Sound familiar?

We haven’t lost the race, at least not yet, but the rivalry is no longer theoretical. We’re watching it play out in semiconductor lithography tools, large-model GPUs, CRISPR crops that can withstand drought and much more. America’s private sector needs to take aggressive and urgent action, and that’s what Lux Capital is doing today.

We do not lecture Congress on appropriations, nor berate agencies working under fiscal constraint. We simply act. 

This is a call-to-action for American scientists and those anywhere in the world who wish to build in America: connect with us directly. We will move quickly to offer prudent counsel, and, where it makes sense, to stand up new ventures to bring to market the most promising American science breakthroughs that might otherwise be abandoned.

It’s always darkest before the light, and America’s competitive edge has always been just that: from the Enlightenment values that protected deviant ideas before they receive acceptance to the photonic light in our fiber optic cables incessantly transmitting the world’s knowledge. Lux means light, and in an era when that beacon risks flickering, we are turning up the wattage. Now.

Get in touch with us at luxlabs@luxcapital.com.