| | Dear friends -
In my last email I've discussed Origin Genomics - which recently became the first company to receive an IRB approval to legally genome edit human embryos, within the US.
It is still early but, in my view, this is just the tip of the iceberg for where conception & fertility tech is headed, within the next decade. One could even say we're at an inflection point - but I'm getting ahead of myself here. I've promised to write up my full thesis on this space so here it is, complete with facts and figures, no fluff. | | |
|  | | | | | Only tech can solve the fertility crisis. Here's the stack.
The climate crisis is a hot (and vastly overused) boogeyman in much of the developed world - yet none of this matters unless we solve the global fertility crisis. As of today, it's basically just countries in Africa, a sliver of Central Asia, and Papua New Guinea at or above population replacement (2.1 children per woman). Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Macau are all below 1.0 - meaning (in the absence of drastic action), their populations will start halving each generation. In Europe - Italy, Lithuania and Spain each sit at around 1.2. United States is a bit better at 1.63 but still well below replacement. Its population is still growing only thanks to mass migration, which is controversial these days.
There are multiple reasons for this global phenomenon. Some of them are cultural and economic: guilt-tripping humans about their own existence, rising cost of living, lack of affordable housing, pessimism about the future, focus on one's own happiness over collective continuity. I have no easy solution to any of those, and neither does anyone else. The West has been fighting that battle for two decades and, judging by the numbers, is still losing, regardless of how loud the pro-natalist voices get. Economic incentives have fared no better: wherever governments tried paying for births (Hungary being the most committed attempt), the result has been largely failure.
But some of the reasons are not cultural at all. They are biological and physical. People postpone reproduction until their fertility is gone (17.5% of global population experience infertility). Pregnancy itself is nine months of physical drain, real medical risk, career interruption, and a delivery most women would not volunteer for twice. These are not opinions about the future of civilization. They are constraints on bodies, and constraints on bodies are the kind of problem technology has a track record of solving. | | |
|  | | | Technology comes to the rescue
We can start by investing in radical life extension, which post-Bryan Johnson is no longer controversial ($8.5bn invested in 2024). This won't directly raise fertility rate - but could at least significantly increase the number of years spent in the workforce and in good health, alleviating the aging population pressures on the economy, healthcare, and social services - maybe even preventing an outright economic collapse. It will only kick the can down the road - but perhaps buy us enough time for culture to evolve, or even change culture directly.
If you live much longer with the same fitness (or biological age), your reproductive window will also be proportionally longer, plus you will have... | | |
| | | | | | | | | Who is a better person to interview on fertility tech than Martin Varsavsky - who runs a chain of 83 IVF clinics, giving birth to 300,000 babies. Plus two deeptech companies in the space, pushing the limits of fertility. All that in addition to having 7 kids! | | |
|  | | | Artificial ovaries, robot embryologists, liquid wombs. Can fertility tech reverse the population collapse?
Martín Varsavsky built five billion-dollar companies in telecom and energy, then aimed all of it at one problem: healthy babies whenever you're ready.
He explains why the embryology lab is the real bottleneck of IVF and egg freezing, how robots now inject sperm into eggs, how eggs matured outside the body cut two weeks of IVF injections to three days, and why normal incubators will soon look inhumane. On his one man quest to fix global birth rates, before it's too late. | | |
| | | In this latest episode of Accelerate Bio podcast, we explore:
00:00 - The Fertility Thesis 07:20 - Making IVF Tolerable 10:50 - FDA Has The Wrong Mandate 13:25 - Artificial Liquid Wombs 18:45 - Is IVG Feasible? 23:20 - Delaying Menopause 28:05 - IVF Robots 36:10 - IVF From $20k to $2k 41:30 - IVF Flips Natural? 45:05 - Bans & Christian IVF 50:15 - Polygenic Embryo Selection 53:20 - AI x Fertility 56:50 - Can Tech Repopulate Planet? 1:01:35 - Culture & Fertility | | |
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| | The Accelerate Bio Podcast explores the future of humanity in the age of AI.
Subscribe for deep-dive conversations with founders, scientists, and investors shaping AI, biotechnology, and human progress. | | |
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Appreciate you! |  | | |
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