Nan Li

Today, X, The Moonshot Factory quietly unveiled A-Life, a project that brings biomanufacturing into the AI era. It may sound niche, but it’s one of the most transformative projects I’ve ever worked on (and that includes Calico Life Sciences, Google’s effort to understand aging and lifespan). Here’s why: We now have a clear way to use living cells, like yeast and bacteria, to produce materials we currently make from petroleum and waste-heavy processes. Look around you: the textiles in your clothes, the packaging of your snacks, the medicines and supplements you take. All of these could be made cheaper, cleaner, and with less waste through biomanufacturing. What’s new is that the team built a set of AI tools specifically for biology that makes this possible at scale. For years, making biomanufacturing cost-competitive has been described as a $30 trillion holy grail for the industry. A-Life is the first time we’ve seen a viable path forward. 🔗 Introducing A-Life: https://lnkd.in/ggrYuUCS For me, collaborating on this was a full-circle ikigai moment, bringing together Google, wonderful teammates, molecular biology, and company-building all at once. Always say yes to those rare moments! Huge thanks to Relly, Jodi, Odd, and the whole team for making this such a fun version of ‘work.’ In my University of Oxford lab days, just trying to keep fibroblast cells alive, I would have been stoked to see this future taking shape. Photo: Making biochemistry thrilling since 2005 :).

344

25 Comments

Very excited to announce our investment in Charta Health today! At Madrona, we believe the most impactful AI companies don’t just speed up existing workflows — they reimagine them from first principles. Charta Health is building an AI-native platform that transforms chart review from a labor-intensive, error-prone process into a real-time intelligence layer — improving care quality, billing accuracy, and provider efficiency. Karan Mehandru and I have had the pleasure of getting to know founders Justin Liu, Scott Morris over the last couple of years and we’re thrilled to be partnering with them and the entire Charta team — alongside Bain Capital Ventures, SV Angel, Refract Ventures, and South Park Commons! More on why we invested below! 👇 https://lnkd.in/druSN-Na

137

9 Comments

I’m thrilled to announce defy.vc’s investment in Birches Health as part of their $20M combined Seed and Series A funding round, alongside incredible partners like AlleyCorp, General Catalyst, Will Ventures, and others. As someone deeply passionate about backing companies that tackle important problems for our society, I couldn’t be more excited about what Birches is building—a national virtual clinic dedicated to treating gambling addiction and related behavioral disorders like gaming, sex, porn, and internet addictions. What excites me most is Birches’ innovative health assurance model: proactive, accessible, and affordable care that’s evidence-based and delivered right at home. With the explosion of legal sports betting—think nearly $1.5 billion wagered on this year’s Super Bowl alone—we’re staring down a looming public health emergency. Traditional options like hotlines or generic therapy fall short for this high-acuity issue, but Birches changes that by offering specialized therapy from trained clinicians, multimodal treatment, and peer support, all covered by major insurers like United Healthcare, Cigna, Aetna, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. It’s available in all 50 states, breaking down geographical and financial barriers that have left so many without help. The impact is already profound: 96% of patients report an improved quality of life, and 94% give Birches a 5/5 rating. By partnering with state governments, payors, and policymakers, Birches is pushing gambling addiction into the spotlight of behavioral health conversations, where it’s been neglected for too long—often leading to shame, worsened outcomes, and higher suicidality risks. This funding will supercharge their growth: expanding the provider network, boosting clinical excellence, scaling infrastructure, and deepening insurance and state partnerships to meet surging demand. Very excited to partner with Elliott Rapaport and the entire Birches team! See more about our POV in the blog post linked in the comments. #GamblingAddiction #BehavioralHealth #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation

159

10 Comments

At Foresite Capital, my team looks for companies where data, science, and leadership come together to create compounding advantage. We found that combination in Thyme Care, and yesterday returned for their Series D. The Thyme Care platform integrates clinical records, claims data, and patient-reported outcomes into a continuously learning system. These insights are being deployed daily to anticipate patient needs, optimize provider workflows, and guide value-based decisions at scale. The team at Thyme - including Robin Shah, a second-generation oncology entrepreneur and oncology insider; Dr. Bobby Green, M.D., a community oncologist and data-driven product builder; and Dr. Bradford Diephuis, a physician and policy architect who understands how to align incentives across the system - are deep operators who are also domain experts. The result is a model that we believe will improve outcomes while creating a richer, more connected data set with every patient interaction. We’re proud to continue partnering with Thyme Care. https://lnkd.in/gfyXm598

78

2 Comments

Today, Medeloop and HealthVerity are launching HealthVerity eXOs, powered by Medeloop. This platform launch is a step toward solving a problem I’ve experienced on both sides as a surgeon trying to make sense of fragmented data, and now as a founder helping institutions unlock its value. Academic medical centers generate some of the richest health data in the world, but too often it sits siloed and underused. With HealthVerity eXOs, we’re changing that. Researchers and clinicians can now: Design and run studies in minutes, not months. Query data where it resides - no centralization, no compromise on sovereignty. Produce transparent, audit-ready insights that regulators and patients can trust. Now with access to over 200 million patient records on HealthVerity’s platform,  academic medical centers, big pharma, biotech and government  brings faster insights and stronger evidence that reflects real patient experience. I’m proud of the team at Medeloop and grateful to Andrew Kress and the greater HealthVerity team for helping make this possible. This is the kind of work that reminds me why I started Medeloop: to turn healthcare data into something that can have a real impact on patients, not just systems.

79

6 Comments