According to MIT Technology Review, a West Coast biotech entrepreneur has secured $30 million to form a public-benefit company called Preventive, marking the largest known investment into the controversial technology of heritable genome editing. The company’s mission is to research the modification of embryo DNA to correct harmful mutations or install beneficial genes, with the stated goal of preventing disease. This development follows the 2019 case where the first scientist to create gene-edited babies, He Jiankui in China, was imprisoned for three years, highlighting the extreme legal and ethical risks. In a separate report, the publication details how startup Still Bright is using water-based reactions derived from battery chemistry to purify copper, offering a potentially less polluting alternative to traditional smelting amid soaring global demand. These two frontier technologies represent significant financial and regulatory gambles.
The Public Benefit Paradox
The structure of Preventive as a public-benefit corporation is a fascinating strategic choice. This legal framework allows the company to ostensibly prioritize its social mission—preventing heritable disease—over pure profit maximization for shareholders. In practice, this is a sophisticated shield. It provides a powerful narrative to regulators, bioethicists, and the public, positioning the venture as a morally-conscious entity rather than a profit-driven one. However, the underlying business model remains incredibly lucrative if successful. The ability to offer a medical procedure that eliminates specific genetic diseases from a family lineage would command an astronomical price, placing it in the realm of ultra-exclusive, high-cost medical interventions. The $30 million investment is a clear signal that sophisticated backers see a path to monumental returns, public-benefit status notwithstanding.
Why Copper, Why Now?
The push to clean up copper production is not merely an environmental story; it’s a story of a looming supply chain crisis. The global energy transition is a copper-intensive endeavor. Electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels all require significantly more copper than their fossil-fuel counterparts. Traditional smelting is not only dirty but is struggling to scale efficiently to meet this projected demand. Still Bright’s technology, if it can be proven at an industrial scale, positions the company at the nexus of two powerful trends: the demand for “green” metals from ESG-focused investors and manufacturers, and the critical need to de-bottleneck a key material for decarbonization. Their success hinges on proving their process is not just cleaner, but also cost-competitive and scalable, turning an environmental solution into a compelling economic one.
Navigating the Valley of Death
Both companies face a formidable “valley of death”—the gap between promising lab-scale technology and commercially viable, regulated deployment. For Preventive, the valley is a chasm of bioethical scrutiny and legal prohibition. The company’s capital will likely be spent not on clinical trials, but on exhaustive preclinical research and a global campaign to sway public and regulatory opinion. The path to any form of revenue is measured in decades, not years. For Still Bright, the challenge is industrial engineering and capital expenditure. Moving from a lab process to building or retrofitting a full-scale smelter requires hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars. Their strategy will likely involve partnering with or licensing their technology to a major mining company that has the capital and infrastructure to deploy it. The $30 million for Preventive and the undisclosed funding for Still Bright are merely the entry fees to begin this long and perilous journey.
