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- [00:00]
A
Before we start today's episode, here's a word from our sponsor. I'm sure some of you are already familiar with the sponsor of this episode. That is sapir, the free quarterly journal of Jewish ideas edited by Bret Stephens. And I'm excited to share that the next issue will feature an article by yours truly. Yes, alongside our VPR and D@ Alenu Shahar Lotan, him and I wrote an article about how Israel can make itself indispensable to the global economy. And very much looking forward to seeing it being published in the next issue of sapir, which will be out shortly. Be sure to sign up for free today so that your subscription begins with the very next issue. On the theme of aspiration, I know Dan always says on Call me back that they should be charging for it, but fortunately it is still available for free in print for all subscribers in the US so please go on sapirjournal.org what's your number? No apostrophe to sign up. That's thepeerjournal.org/ what's your number?
- [01:08]
B
You are listening to an art media podcast.
- [01:12]
A
So, Yale, what's your number?
- [01:14]
C
My number is really simple. This week it's $1 billion. Yep, it's very catchy. It's also the amount raised by Israeli startups in all of January of this year alone, just in 2026. So I'm counting around 24 local startups that raised more than $1 billion together. And it's the strongest January for Israeli tech since 2022. So that's my number. Yonatan, what's yours?
- [01:37]
A
Mine is eight. That's Danny Avdia's number. It's the first ever Israeli NBA All Star. The thing that I'm focused on is that the ultimate kind of immune system to AI, or the ultimate winner in an AI world is professional sports committed to it at a family level where, like we're enjoying the kids kind of trying to excel in different fields. I do believe this is going to be impactful and I think that Danny's first time All Star in Israel ever in history is a sign. It's an inspiration. And I think that the economic dynamics around professional sports are going to be something that Israel is going to excel at because right now we're at a pretty inferior point. So I'm celebrating whatever is out there when it comes to Israeli professional sports.
- [02:21]
C
Whose number wins?
- [02:22]
A
I think your number wins. At the end of the day, to me, the number to beat this year is 80 billion. That was the total sum of M&As and exits last year. But starting off the year with 1 billion raised in January is like science fiction, considering what we went through. All right, it is 5pm here in Israel, by the way. So from your perspective, 1 billion big enough, you would want it to be bigger again, considering the 80 billion in which the year ended in 2025, $1.
- [02:56]
C
Billion is by all standards a huge number collectively to raise. But I did just see a report recently that shows that investors can't invest enough in cyber because it's growing so fast. And the expenses that enterprises are spending on cyber security products is far outperforming the investor money going in. So $1 billion does sound like a lot, and it is a lot, but it's still less than what enterprises themselves are spending.
- [03:23]
A
It's interesting. That's kind of like the mirror image of AI, right? That where most of the funding and most of the capital creation is funding going into companies. It's a very interesting metric. What outpaces what. That's a great angle and that's interesting. I never thought about it that way.
- [03:38]
C
So there's still much more to go. I hope. Some will say it's a bubble, but.
- [03:41]
A
Yeah, 79 and a half to beat last year.
- [03:43]
C
So there we go, high standards.
- [03:45]
A
Yeah, look, I mean, that's the thing with the tech industry, it has to grow, otherwise, you know, just capital outflows elsewhere. And in today's episode, we're actually going to celebrate a very interesting acquisition in the biotech space, rather in the AI and biotech space. It's a pioneering acquisition done by none other than one of the most amazing scientists, female tech leaders in the world, Dr. Daphne Kohler. She's one of those people who is, you know, worthy of the title serial entrepreneur. Between Coursera and are there initiatives at the bleeding edge of tech now is focused in the last seven to eight years on AI driven drug discovery. And Insitro, the company she founded and CEOs just made an acquisition in combinable AI in Israel. We're going to spend some time with Daphne later today to discuss biotech AI, the Israeli ecosystem, her own journey. And really I think that's going to be a privilege for us and for the listeners.
- [04:43]
C
Absolutely. She is a very rare talent and I'm very excited personally to be able to meet her and speak to her today. But first, as usual, we're going to take a look at some of the week's pressing news, AKA our big shorts. And of course, the latest update on the Windex. The what's your number index that tracks the performance of publicly traded Israeli based or founded companies. Let's kick things off with this week's Windex. Yonatan, how's it looking?
- [05:09]
A
It's in the red again, underperforming a sluggish Nasdaq and a slightly green S&P 500. It's been a volatile week with the introduction of the new chairman of the Fed. An important step that ends, you know, the President's discontent with the current Fed chair Jerome Powell, which he appointed in his first term. We saw gold and silver lose double digit on Friday. Like it was so funny because the Friday papers were celebrating gold and silver. And there was even an outcry here in Israel against the chairman of the central bank for having zero gold in the bank's reserves considering where gold went and beat S and P and other key indicators over the last 24 months. And there you have it. In one day both gold and silver lose double digits. So the nominated chair, Kevin Warshunderkid, a protege of Stan Druckenmiller who was appointed to the Fed board of governors in 2006. I think it was like 34 or 35 and he was a trusted figure by that time with Ben Bernanke kind of navigating the exit from the global financial crisis. So I think it was an important week. The markets responded accordingly. On the winner side for the Windex are leading the pack is Nova Measurements. One of my favorite companies really, you know, kind of quiet yekish company that's so critical for the supply chain of silicon wafers again in historic heights. Up 7.97% on the week at 13 and a half billion dollar market cap. Such good news for the industry and showing again the strength of Israel's silicon posture. Also good news for Big Dig, one of our big digitals. Fiverr.com last week traded below its net cash position. So a bit of a negative sentiment over the last few months. Up five and a half percent over an analyst buy recommendation. Curious to hear your thoughts on that.
- [06:58]
C
Yeah, so days when gold and silver drop like that are very rare. But actually I want to pause on Nova's performance. As you say, this is a company that's sitting right at the core of the semiconductor value chain. And the stock's performance is definitely a signal. I think that the picks and shovels tech still wins even in uncertain macro environments. In a way it's become kind of like a proxy for global confidence in Israeli deep tech. We even consume us ourselves in the markets with consumer tech But Israeli Deep Tech has been there kind of all along quietly and on the consumer front. Yeah, you're right. Fiverr, it's been rough. And these are kind of sentiment cycles I would say, right. They're almost weekly. I don't know that an analyst buy sentiment is going to change the stock this week, but it's been brutal for Fiverr and, and I suspect it will continue to be.
- [07:46]
A
Yeah. And I think the sentiment was that it was the state of affairs of the stock being below, traded below its cash position was kind of like, okay, it can't be that bad. Whatever you think about AI, you know, so, you know, in the red and this actually does continue the trend. Monday.com, another week where it bottoms the Windex. Same AI headwinds, same challenges to the SaaS space. Just you know, Yael, how quickly the world changes when it comes to digital tech. Right. Three years ago everybody wanted to be SaaS when we were on the road show in Wall Street. It's like how is this recurring revenue and how is this SaaS and does that compare to that in that Multiple? Monday lost 10.63% just this past week nearing its all time low. That said, I did some digging and research in preparation for today. A company was already in this territory below 6 billion market cap just about three years ago May 2023. And it rallied in an incredible period of growth to recover that position, more than doubling until June 6, 2025, less than a year ago was at its peak. So you know, I think it's a rollercoaster, but let's see where it goes.
- [08:52]
C
I remember quite clear. I mean it wasn't that too long ago, but I do remember quite clearly the market effectively writing it off, but only as you say, to watch it execute its way back. I'm not saying it guarantees any kind of repeat of that, but I do think that this company knows how to operate under pressure and so we will continue to monitor.
- [09:10]
A
Another interesting dynamic when it comes to Deep Tech. The government's AI bureau headed by Eric Askel is taking more and more steps. Last week we saw whether it was a leak or a press release. Globes, an Israeli leading economic newspaper, leaked the published, I should say the MoU, the memorandum of Understanding between Jacob Helberg and the Paxilica Dynamics and the Israeli government around a very advanced AI park in the south of Israel, not so far from the Gaza envelope. Actually that may actually include a nuclear facility led by the US Because Israel cannot build nuclear facilities on its ground is not part of the Non proliferation treaty. Very interesting creative solution for how to build accelerated multiple gigawatt capacity in Israel to drive AI on an ex territory not so far from the Gaza border. The government declined to respond but it seems like this is something that went back and forth and has been signed as an mou. So deep tech, American Israeli alliance. American Israeli Emirati alliance. Those are how we build the next generation of big tech. And it's good to see again that we have cyber, we have digital and so on. But this type of technology isn't stopping, right?
- [10:28]
C
As I said, it's always been in the background. It just doesn't always get to the headlines. Although in your case it was definitely leaked to the Globe's financial newspaper. Okay, big shorts, this one is big and very exciting. Last week Apple confirmed it acquired the Israeli startup Qai for an estimated almost $2 billion. It appears to be the second largest acquisition in Apple history. That's Apple's history, not Israeli history, Apple's history. So what is Qai if you don't know or have never heard about it? I know you know you on a ton but our listeners may not and you're not alone because the company was still in stealth mode when it was acquired and therefore very tight lipped in public about its tech. But the patents it filed showed the tech was being used in headphones or glasses, using and I quote, facial skin micro movements for non verbal communication. It was supposedly to boost up Apple's wearable technologies. Now the founders of Qai, one of them is Aviad Meisels whose previous project Primesense was also acquired by Apple in 2013. So he's a second timer coming in hot and he was. In 2013 PrimeSense was core to developing Apple's facial recognition software. His co founders with Qai are fellow Israeli entrepreneurs Yonatan Wechsler and Avi Barlia and they and their 100 employees are now going to join Apple. Yonatan.
- [11:52]
A
Well a couple things here that I think are worthwhile. First, this is the power of the ecosystem, right? Apple with the second acquisition, it's not a company that acquires a lot. Second acquisition in Israel goes back to Avi Admysils who they know and I think that's a highly indicative kind of value that you get in an ecosystem, right? Tech is not about where you pour money and you just grow tech. We've seen Qatar try to do it, we've seen Saudi try to do it, we've seen Turkey try to, we've seen France and other bigger and more Established countries like Italy and others try to do it. It is not that easy. And the fact that Israel already has those recurring dynamics is a big deal. We saw it with Avigdovillins in the semiconductor businesses time and time again and I think this is important. The second piece, number two at Apple for hardware, is an Israeli, Johnny Scrooge. He's been there for, I think probably 15 years. I remember going to meet him. He granted me 15 minutes as a young Israeli entrepreneur in the Apple complex in Silicon Valley to hear the thoughts of how we're going to use Apple cameras to deliver kidney function measurements under FDA and then chronic wound management, and basically told me where the stack is going and as much as he could. These are the hallmarks of a mature, very competitive tech ecosystem. I will say two quick things about Yoni and about Avi. Avi I don't know well enough, but Avi was on the team of Bereshit for quite some time, being the lead AI of the spacecraft that we had all hoped would land on the moon. And he's sort of like a Wunderkid. Also an incredible guy, a true genius. Yoni Wechsler I tried to recruit as my CTO quite a number of times when at the time he was at orcam working with Amnon Shashua. I failed. Let's put it this way, these are really people at the far, far end of what they do and it doesn't surprise me that they were acquired in stealth mode. Let's put it this way.
- [13:45]
C
I was reading through the blog post of Edin Chohat, who is one of the seed investors in Qai, and he was talking about how he missed investing in Prime Sense in Aviad's first startup. And then years later, when Aviad approached him again with Qai, I didn't approach Aviat. It was the other way around. This time he had a reaction and I'm going to quote, but he said no fucking way. And he didn't want. He said, I'm not betting against this guy. Again, he was so sorry he hadn't funded Prime Sense. It's really buying the future. It's not buying a product, as you said, you know, the people over at Apple and they know exactly where they're going. And so kind of investing in these hundred people and in these founders is really kind of investing in the future of Apple and not buying a product off the shelf.
- [14:31]
A
Let's move on to the second big short. This one is actually a bit different. Over the weekend we saw a person Israel doesn't like us Israelis. We don't appreciate this person that much. That is the chief of the un, the Secretary General, who said that the UN is approaching an imminent, I'm quoting an imminent financial collapse, citing unpaid fees and a budget rule that forced the global body to return unspent money. Letters seen by Reuters on Friday showed that this is the case. This is not a typical big short as it doesn't relate directly to the Israeli economy. But for Israel, a kind of in limbo UN is not a good thing. It is a good thing politically because it allows us to maybe hopefully recreate the international legal framework for the Israeli Palestinian conflict in ways that may usher in a new era, more constructive one for Gaza, for the west bank, because the UN was not a fair player when it comes to that. But if you zoom out, a weak player that's out there seeking a financial rescue is basically calling on nefarious actors to do that, right? So the fact that the US pulled out its funding and we all know the Donald Trump Monroe national security policy, it sort of was stated there sovereignty before international bodies in a very honest way, because truly those international bodies have failed. They failed in Congo, they failed in other places in Africa, they failed in Ukraine and Russia and so on. Clearly they need to be rebooted, if you will. But if America pulls out and Qatar steps in, or any other nefarious actor, if you will, sort of buys their way, as they have in other institutions, into this UN body, most of the people in the world, when they hear the word according to a UN report, they still think it's credible. That is a big risk for the Israeli economy. It is a big risk for the BDS dimensions against Israel. And so while I do not like the fact that the UN is where it is right now, and I would definitely want Israel to leverage the sort of interim period, I would also not like to see this body fail, collapse and being rescued financially by nefarious actors. That would be bad for Israel in general. It would be bad for the Israeli economy.
- [16:40]
C
I agree. I mean, I caution around this story not to go too fast, and I think you put it well to kind of separate two things. There's a very real financial and governance stress that the UN is under, but the other idea is really about international law and multilateral coordination more broadly, what happens when there is no UN or when there is a very weak un and those aren't the same things. And so institutions can be strained or imperfect, but they still matter. And I think, you know, as we look at other trends in economic stories that we're following. There is a broader shift in how power, legitimacy and institutions are being redefined. And I think it very much holds for global institutions as well. As we look at the post 10-7-Israel, the question really isn't whether the UN is good or bad, but whether it remains credible. Right. And as you said, most of the world does look at UN report and take it at face value. But unfortunately, fragile UN doesn't eliminate international law, but it does distort how it's applied. And that's where US included smaller countries and Israel. We're going to feel the effects first.
- [17:41]
A
Yeah. And you know, it's a great point that you're making that it's a broader unraveling or changing. I think we are at a point where a French author in the 60s once called the end of the sewage of history. It's this kind of period where everything is in flux. Right. Just to give you an example, before we recorded, I read a big piece about how Xi Jinping overnight said, you know, the dollar is at now 57% reserve currency globally. It used to be 70%. Right. This decline is very clear and very apparent. China wants the renminbi to be a monetary power of record. They're now at 2% of global reserves. Now he's saying that, but at the same time, the monetary reforms that need to happen in China aren't happening. So it's very nice to declare that China wants to step up and for the yuan to be the currency of record when it comes to international monetary reserves. But you can't do that if you don't open and allow trade in your currency because nobody's going to buy that currency. And for you guys, five years down the line, decide it's worth half or double. Right. It doesn't work that way. So still America, in my view, for the foreseeable future and all the way through the end of the century, considering the reforms that the Trump presidency is undergoing, which I think are pivotal for American monetary supremacy, like the Strategic Minerals act or the Genius act or things we discussed on the POD about six months ago. But yeah, the world is in flux. Israel needs to navigate very difficult waters to promise economic freedom as it is export driven. All those companies we discussed in the Windex or others basically have no maneuverability if international law isn't applied at minimum, and if the international institutions are shifting that quickly.
- [19:29]
C
Today we are joined by Daphne Kohler, an Israeli American computer scientist and currently the CEO and founder of Incitro, a machine learning driven Drug discovery and development company. Just last month, Citro announced the acquisition of Israeli startup Combinable AI and the establishment of a new R D center here in Israel. Daphne was a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford university and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship recipient. She's also one of the founders of Coursera. And if we go back even further, she completed her MA at just 18 at Hebrew University. Basically, she's one of those people whose career makes you stop and rethink what is possible. Daphne, great to have you.
- [20:14]
B
Great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
- [20:16]
C
Okay, so I'd like to start with an earlier stage in your career. You were part of building Coursera at a moment when online learning was still very much experimental. Online education was a great promise about a decade ago, and there were even discussions that maybe the school system would end as we know it. How do you look back at that time and what did it teach you?
- [20:36]
B
I think that's a great question. And I think there was at the time the notion of a digital revolution in the air that was basically transforming entire sectors one after the other and a recognition that you either got on the train or the train was going to run you over. And the same thing happened to traditional media. It happened in commerce, it happened in video delivery. Netflix and does require, I think, a rethinking of how one approaches one's area. And some incumbents were able in each of those areas to make the transition, but many were not. And the message that we were sending to universities is that it is important to kind of embrace and rethink one's development and not just pretend that it's not going to happen to you. I never thought this would end face to face education. That was never the intention of us at Coursera and never part of our messaging. In fact, what we thought it would do is transform how education was delivered and make it better. I would say this probably didn't happen as much as we thought it would. I was hoping that people would embrace, for example, active learning in the classroom and defer much of the sort of reading through of materials or understanding the basics to an online setting. I think that was too big of a cultural transformation for many institutions to embrace, unfortunately. But we're starting to see more and more of that happening today with the advent of AI. And so I think some things take longer than you expect. And I would echo, I don't know to whom to attribute this quote. I've heard it attributed to Bill Gates, but I think it precedes him, which is that People always overestimate the effect of any new technology at the two year timeframe and underestimate its effect on a ten year timeframe. And I would say that that is probably the single biggest lesson that I took to what we're doing today at Insitro, which is there were all these hyperbolic statement about how we're going to discover, you know, hundreds of drugs in three years. And the fundamentals of this industry just don't make that possible. Clinical trials take what they take. I mean, you can accelerate them some, but there is sort of a rate limiting factor which is human biology and you can't accelerate it beyond that. But I think the impact will at the 10 year timeframe or maybe 15. Given this is an industry that's intrinsically more slow moving, I think that that impact will be far more transformative than people appreciate.
- [23:13]
A
So, Daphne, maybe a word before we discuss Citro in more depth and the decision to acquire in Israel. I think one of the most interesting parts of your journey is that you got to collaborate or lead some of the brightest minds out there. Right, Andrew, Angie, who was a collaborator of yours and other areas, what's your overview on talent these days in Israel? What do you see where you are based in the West Coast? The National Bureau of Economic Research last week published an amazing report on basic science gravitating towards China heavily. No longer the bits and pieces at the bottom. What are your thoughts on sort of where that is how you would place Israel in this context, as I think you have a very unique vantage point.
- [23:52]
B
So let me start with talent broadly and nurturing talent in the right ways in the age of AI, and then we'll talk about the cream of the crop. I think we need to fundamentally change how we educate people in the days of AI, because many of the mundane sort of more rote jobs that in the information sector are going to go away because AI will be able to perform them faster, better, more accurately and more cheaply than a human. I think we need to take a step back and ask ourselves what is it that a human can uniquely do better than a computer? And as of now, I would say that is in the realm of idea, mediating free concepts, somewhat murky, ill defined, formalizing them with the aid of course of a computer, kind of as a thought partner, and then breaking it down into specific tasks that can be solved by a computer or by an agent in collaboration with other agents and with humans and so on. And I think that's a really complex skill. It's not something that we teach people. It's something that we've traditionally assumed people will just pick up as part of a traditional education where we taught them something else. I think we need to move away from that and just be really explicit and deliberate in how we teach that, because right now the majority, I would say, of humans are not taught that skill. So in terms of the talent landscape, it's a difficult one. I think talent exists everywhere, and I would say the ability to identify, nurture, and develop that talent is something that some countries have traditionally been better than others. Israel has actually, when I grew up, I was actually pretty good at it. And that I wouldn't necessarily attribute that to our education system as much as to the military, which was doing a really good job of identifying top people and putting them in military units. That allowed them to really grow. The U.S. of course, in a position where the U.S. education system was so strong and so powerful that it was able to identify and create what are some of the top academic institutions in the world, some of the top entrepreneurs, scientists, leaders in the world, by training them appropriately in whether it's STEM or other leadership disciplines. I think that is something that is really important for the US to try and sustain going forward if it wants to retain a leadership position in the world. It's not a given that that happens. And I would point to a country that was once a true world leader in ideas and innovation, which is Germany. Germany was among the leading countries in innovation and discovery in the early 20th century. And then with what happened in World War II and the fact that many scientists were either murdered in the camps or escaped to other countries, both Jewish scientists and non Jewish scientists that center left Germany and they're still working to rebuild. China is a very interesting place because I agree for many years China was viewed as the country that came in second or third and just copied other inventions made elsewhere. Even that, I would argue, is not a thing that one should dismiss. Other countries invented, for example, solar panels, but China scaled that better than anybody else, and now they own the majority of the solar market in the world. And I think it's important not to dismiss the innovation that comes from continuous iterative improvement that comes when you build something to scale. We're seeing that in biopharma now, where simply by virtue of running many, many, many clinical trials, for example, the ecosystem learns. It learns and it gets better. And that really creates a situation where they may overtake other countries such as the US or Israel, in their ability to innovate and lead. All of this, of course, is Helped by the fact that many scientists that were trained, for example, in the US and Europe are now returning to China. And so I think if the Western world wants to retain a leadership or co leadership position, it has to be a deliberate and thoughtful effort, not something that we just assume will persist indefinitely.
- [28:15]
C
You found it in Citro. It sounds like similar to Coursera. It might be a bit before it's time until the market catches up, because it does sit kind of at this intersection of machine learning and drug discovery discovery. So for listeners who aren't in biotech, what problem are you actually trying to solve?
- [28:31]
B
The problem that we're trying to solve at in Citro is the problem of helping patients with unmet need. Currently, if you look at the list of all named diseases, less than 25% of them have any kind of therapeutic intervention. And that therapeutic intervention, even if it exists, may or may not offer substantial benefit to patients. One of the diseases that we're working on is als, which is a horrible disease. It's also called Lou Gehrig's disease. It's basically a death sentence at three to five years in a horrible hormone, horrible death. There's four approved drugs, so it falls into that 25% bucket of diseases that have some kind of intervention. But none of those are particularly meaningful. They only extend lifespan by about two to three months. The reason why so few diseases have any kind of drugs is because the process is so long, so expensive, and so fraught to failure. When a new mechanism goes into the clinic, that is not something that's a me too me three drug against a known target. 90% of those fail. 90% failure rate. I used to say that there is no other industry that has the same kind of failure rates except for space travel. But then space travel got really good. So now we stand alone and that that is not a viable option for us given the number of patients who are dying every day, because we are not able as an industry to offer them interventions. So I think the fundamental reason for this is because we're to a large extent throwing spaghetti against the wall. We're trying to treat diseases that we do not understand. And so we, we stab in the dark, we make a guess that this looks plausible and we're going to try it using patients as our experimental system. And then, you know, not surprisingly, these don't work a very large percentage of the time. What we're trying to do is to basically come up with a new completely different approach to how one does drug discovery and development, which is not come in with Preconceptions by a human about what is likely or not likely to work. We believe that if we measure biology at unprecedented fidelity and scale using measurement techniques that are now available to us, and then use AI to extract signal in an unbiased, principled way from the data that we collect, new insights will emerge that are more actionable and higher efficacy than what we're able to do by kind of searching around in the dark.
- [30:47]
A
Daphne, is it by chance that you guys are focusing on diseases like ALS in terms of the regulatory framework? In terms of the fact that some of the innovation would require more, I don't want to say lax, like a more open fda, considering that there is no available drug. You know, I remember our path at Healthy IO, bringing AI to diagnostics. The focus of FDA was near zero, false negative, like almost impossible to achieve in diagnostics because we dealt with diabetes and kidney care, which is very common and has treatment. How do you decide on the path? Does the regulatory path or having a drug, you know, sort of make a difference? Is it future pharma partnerships that can drive that? How do you kind of decide on where to go now?
- [31:35]
B
That's a great question. And we've put together a multi part rubric for selecting our indications. I would say that at the top of our list, it's both unmet need and a differentiated ability that we believe we offered in CTRO to do things differently and uncover novel mechanisms that can affect the disease. That intersection is the single most important lens that we bring. Now with that lens, the secondary aspects that we then ask ourselves is, well, let's say we can discover something novel in an area that has unmet need. Are we the ones that are best positioned to drive that forward into the clinic? Or is that something that we would do together with a partner? So, for example, our other lead programs right now are in metabolic disease with mash, fatty liver disease being the lead indication, and then obesity, that is other than central obesity. And you would ask, will we be the ones to ultimately take that through phase three registrational studies for multiple years across multiple countries, or is that something that we would do together with a partner? And the answer is we'll likely do that one together with a partner.
- [32:44]
C
So tell us a bit about your acquisition of combinable. Is that acquisition meant to fill a gap? Was it about talent in tech?
- [32:52]
B
Well, all of the above.
- [32:54]
C
Sounds like a winner then.
- [32:56]
B
Yeah, no, absolutely a winner. And we could not be more thrilled. But let me take you through this rationale. So the core of what we had built at in Citro, for most of our existence, is a discovery engine that we're calling the Virtual Human. And it is an engine that identifies novel intervention points in a disease. And it brings together cellular data that we print in our own wet labs and clinical data that we bring in from the outside, all enhanced and interrogated using AI. And it comes up with a high conviction target in an indication says, you need to inhibit this target or activate this target in this indication, and hopefully good things will happen. But a target is not the end of the journey, it's the end of the beginning. And in order to bring the value to patients, you need to take that target and turn it into a drug. And so we've also been building simultaneously an engine that takes those targets and basically turns them into molecules in the therapeutic modality that is most appropriate for the target. And one capability that we lacked was large molecules, proteins, biologics. And initially we didn't make that investment because we felt like others were building that capability and we could partner that. And there's only so many things that one can internally build and be successful without getting distracted and all over the place. But over time, the realization became that actually many of our targets were biologics, and that was the right modality to prosecute. And partnering turned out to be less easy than we'd thought in terms of having control over the timelines, the rigor, and also the economics. And as we looked around at the partnering landscape, the potential partner that came to the top was actually Combinable. And so we were about to start negotiating. How would combinable be able to help us with a couple of our lead programs? When they told us that they were looking for a happy home, that became an obvious yes, because we were very impressed with what the team had built with a very, very modest headcount in a relatively short time frame. And so it wasn't just about the technology. It was also about the people that we would be able to bring on board and what they'd be able to do with the greater resources that we had at in Citro. And I would say that in addition to the people currently on board, I have great confidence in Non Katz, who's the head of the company and the head of the Israeli R and D site would be able to hire from the Israeli talent landscape and lots of amazingly smart people, of course, in Israel. And maybe it's great that not all of them do cyber.
- [35:36]
C
For sure.
- [35:37]
A
From your perspective, though, as trying again, going back to the fundamentals of building a bioinformatics ecosystem. Israel takes pride in its digital healthcare, in the data that goes back 20, 25 years, dynamics with Pfizer that led to the vaccine, and so on and so forth. Is in citro seeking to be a beneficiary of that.
- [35:59]
B
From a computer science perspective, Israel has always been sort of in a leadership position that is far disproportionate to the size of the country or the size of even the academic community. And I would say that is true broadly, and it's also true specifically in the area of bioinformatics. One of best PhD students is on the faculty at Weizman Institute. Many younger students or who were younger students that I collaborated with when they were in their PhD or postdoc are back in Israel doing incredible work in academia or in industry. And so I think there is a proliferation of talent that is trained in relevant ways. There's also actually quite a number of interdisciplinary programs that teach people sort of computer science and the sciences in academic institutions and therefore where they are trained to be bilingual at the get go. I think there should be more of including here in the United States. So I think there is a real opportunity to kind of leverage that talent and as I said earlier, siphon some of them away from let's build yet another cyber company to doing something that is really meaningful in the digital health and biology space. That intersection between AI and biology, I think is where the future is for much of biology. Biology is really, really complicated and has lacked a formal foundation that is able to make predictions that are likely to come true. And when you think about a previous science that we have formalized, whether it's calculus, the formal foundation for Newtonian physics, whether it's probability theory and stochastic systems, giving us a formal foundation for quantum physics. We needed a similar framework for biology. And I believe that that framework will be AI because it's only with the much larger computational power and ability to absorb massive amounts of data that we will be able to make predictions in biology that have a reasonable chance of turning out to be true. And so that is the fundamental thing that we need to build. And in order to do that, you need some number of people who speak both languages so that they understand both what the technology can accomplish and what problems actually move the needle. Because if you end up with people who understand only one or the other, you very typically run the risk of either having really cool and exciting machine learning about a problem that no one cares about, or simple bioinformatics tools that might be impactful but are not transformative. Being applied by life scientists. And so bilingual people are really critical.
- [38:43]
A
Where do we go from here in terms of longevity between AI doctors and AI chemists? Are we going to live forever or not?
- [38:50]
B
So I think living forever is a goal that is not currently on our horizon and whose desirability, I think, is in doubt to begin with. So I'm not going to comment on that, But I will say that I believe that there is a real opportunity to meaningfully move the needle on human health span. And when you look at the history of. Of massively impactful therapeutic interventions over the last century, we're basically beating diseases down one after the other. So we are basically playing a game of whack a mole where we end up addressing one disease. The next one down the line is the one that we need to think about, because that's the next killer. And so as we address those, health span becomes longer and lifespan becomes longer for some people. Now, whether we can fundamentally redress the biology of. Of broad aging, that we are only starting to really understand the constellation of factors and realizing that there are multiple. There's protein misfolding, there is accumulation of somatic mutations in different types of tissues, most notably the inflammatory immune system. Each of those will probably be its own game of whack a mole because it's multiple processes that start to degrade as we grow older. Some of those are even mechanical, like, you know, our joints, and are wearing down. So that, I think, will be a comparable game of whack a mole, where you address one aspect of it and another one becomes the next target after that. And I think that's what we do as people. We just constantly try and make our world better. Now, whether we're also making our world worse at the same time is a longer philosophical discussion.
- [40:41]
C
Reading between the lines, calling on more computer scientists to go to health tech.
- [40:46]
B
I don't think it was between the lines. I think it was pretty very clear.
- [40:50]
A
Fair enough.
- [40:51]
B
I think more computer scientists should pursue a career that explicitly aims to make the world a better place. And if that is in bioinformatics, that's one place. I think there's tremendous opportunities for Israel, for example, in ag tech and food tech, which is, I think, going to be an area of excruciating need with, you know, climate change. I think there's so many opportunities to something that is both technically challenging and exciting, hopefully remunerative to founders and employees, but also makes the world a better place. And I really would encourage people to consider those paths.
- [41:30]
A
Thank you very much.
- [41:31]
C
Thank you, Daphne.
- [41:32]
B
Thank you.
- [41:38]
C
Well, we began our show with the numbers of the week and we're going to end with our words of the week. So I'm going to go back to the incredible Qai story. I really, I really love it, me and everyone else. And I'm reading through all the investor notes, as I said, and takeaways and reading through kind of everyone's insights. And one really stayed with me because it wasn't the obvious, wow, these guys are geniuses, which they totally are. But Tom Hum, a seed investor Qin Qai from GV, which is formerly Google Ventures, wrote on LinkedIn a post that coming from him at the time of celebrating really stood out. Tom is a Brit, for those who don't know, and after commending the team and their tech, Tom wrote the following, and I quote, after the horrendous October 7th attack in 2023, approximately 30% of the company were drafted into military service. And for months afterwards, our weekly meetings were interrupted as his team had to scramble into bomb shelters. This slowed them down less than I could have imagined. And not once did they and he's referring to the Israelis complain. Instead, their energy was focused on supporting their community and making technical breakthroughs. You know, I'm just scrolling and scrolling through and suddenly this hits me and from someone, you know, not as likely, I guess, to write something. Such touching words. And it was just a kind of a reminder of the insane reality that is Israel and why building a company here really has no precedent.
- [42:54]
A
Yeah, I think it echoes also what Daphne mentioned in in her decision to buy a company in Israel and use that as a basis for AI and drug discovery. Tom Holm, to those who don't know Google, him, he's heavily involved in the Israeli tech ecosystem, usually doesn't kind of go out and share these types of experiences. So to hear it from Tom is really incredible. Shout out to Tom for writing this. These type of comments drive Israeli pride and drive Israeli entrepreneurs to push the envelope.
- [43:24]
C
Definitely goes a long way.
- [43:25]
A
Yeah, that's it for today's show. Thanks for tuning in to Ark Media's what's yous Number? We hope you find it interesting. If you did, be sure to like subscribe, rate, review. You know the drill, but most importantly, share it with others who you think will find it interesting. If you want to make suggestions or share your feedback, please reach out to us at what's your number? @arcmedia.org.
- [43:53]
C
What's yous numbers? And arc media podcast. Arc media's executive producer is adam james levin areti. Our production manager is brittany cohen. Sound and video editing is by liquid audio. Our theme music is by midnight generation. I am yael wissner levy.
- [44:08]
A
I'm yonatan adiri. See you back here next week. This podcast offers general business and economic information and is not a comprehensive summary for investment decisions. It does not recommend or solicit any investment strategy or security.