A $500 million nonprofit launches to fight respiratory viruses
A new nonprofit called Intercept has launched with $500 million in backing to reduce — and ultimately try to eliminate — common respiratory infections such as colds and flu. Its funders include Stripe, Anthropic, the OpenAI Foundation, the Flu Lab, Bill Gates, and traders from Jane Street.
The group plans to deploy grants and investments across three fronts: vaccines that target multiple viruses at once, large-scale air-cleaning systems (including UV) for schools and workplaces, and experimental treatments like engineered nasal-spray proteins meant to block infection. The economic logic is the point of the structure. More than 200 viruses cause respiratory illness, which makes single-virus vaccines commercially unattractive for drugmakers; a well-funded nonprofit can underwrite the harder, lower-margin work. Advisers include former FDA official Peter Marks and Operation Warp Speed’s Moncef Slaoui, and the effort is explicitly modeled on the speed of the COVID-19 vaccine push. Whether broad-spectrum prevention is technically achievable remains the open question.