Al Mashal

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Al Mashal

Al Mashal

@al_mashal

Co-founder & CEO of @CurrentSurgical. Formerly @medtronic & @CambConsultants. Piled Higher and Deeper @UWMadison. 👐 Badger for life. 🧀

Washington, DC Katılım Haziran 2009
1.2K Takip Edilen326 Takipçiler
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Amir Mashal
Amir Mashal@AmirMashal·
Before the seed round, before the launch, and before any of this felt real, there was @1517fund . When my brother @al_mashal forwarded me 1517 Fund’s tweet about the Flux Capacitor Fellowship, I had no idea what would happen a year and a half later. That fellowship gave me the chance to go after the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about: building the materials that could rewire the world. @William_Blake, @DStrachman, and @TheHarryGandhi believed before everyone else and enabled me to turn conviction into a company. And when Michael came out to the garage lab, he was one of the first people to see the laser infusion demo in person. A lot has happened since then, but 1517 was there from the very beginning. I’ll always be grateful for Danielle, Michael, and the entire 1517 team for being there before it was obvious.
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Matt Krisiloff
Matt Krisiloff@mattkrisiloff·
I’m so excited to share this update on @Conception – We’ve generated the first early human eggs derived from stem cells. This is a big deal -- the potential to redefine fertility is real.
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Al Mashal
Al Mashal@al_mashal·
Very proud of my brother @AmirMashal who has been hard at work developing one of the most significant energy breakthroughs of our lifetime. People often think about the source of the energy, but not many have looked at the underlying transmission that’s needed for literally everything we touch. Excited for @arcturustechinc as they rewire the world!
Amir Mashal@AmirMashal

Today, after about a year and a half of heads-down work, I’m excited to announce that Arcturus is emerging from stealth with an $8M seed round led by Initialized Capital with participation from 1517, Toyota Ventures, Wireframe Ventures, and Climate Capital. This all started with a realization that I couldn’t shake: the world’s asking more and more from metals that were never designed for the systems we’re building today. EVs, drones, robotics, AI data centers, the grid. The modern world runs on copper and aluminum doing their job quietly in the background. But as power, heat, and performance demands keep rising, those materials are becoming a bottleneck. At Arcturus, we’re building a new class of conductor materials by infusing carbon nanomaterials into metals. The goal is simple: help wires, motors, and thermal systems move more power, shed more heat, and hold up in harsher conditions, without redesigning everything around them. Not long ago, this was just an idea in my garage in Los Angeles. I’m incredibly grateful to our investors, partners, advisors, and early believers who helped us get here: thank you for seeing it before there was much to see. This is just the beginning and I’m so excited for what comes next! @Initialized @zcperret @brettdg | @1517fund @William_Blake @DStrachman | @Breakthrough @bchevva | @WireframeVC @lbernicker @harsh1 | @Toyota_Ventures @lisabcoca | @climatecap @sunrock | @smathaudhu | @al_mashal @april_brady @SarahRhoades @arcturustechinc

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april brady
april brady@april_brady·
I have a gluten intolerance and still found this a delightful read.
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Al Mashal
Al Mashal@al_mashal·
There is certainly a lot of untapped potential around early detection and treatment. But early detection does not mean a patient is in the clear. Most often, patients are still forced toward chemo/radiation - non-curative treatments with brutal side effects. We need technologies that give more patients access to surgery - the gold standard cure for most cancers. Bonus: surgery allows us to bypass the biological complexity issue altogether.
Jeff Huber 🇺🇸@jhuber

There are two paths to "curing cancer": 1) better late-stage drugs – real progress, and hopefully much more with AI, but we're still far from curing most metastatic cancers (the biology is brutally complex), and 2) detecting cancer early, when existing treatments (surgical resection & therapeutics) can actually cure it. Right now ~80% of cancers are found late. Flip that ratio and you save enormous numbers of lives now with tools we already have. Multi-cancer early detection (MCED) screening tests, like GRAIL Galleri and and Exact Sciences CancerGuard are available today. I was the founding CEO of GRAIL; re: AI: GRAIL was an entirely enabled by AI/machine learning/deep learning with data generated by the largest clinical study program ever undertaken. We should absolutely keep pushing on AI-enabled new cancer therapeutics, but early detection can save lives today and make future AI therapeutics more effective. @GrailBio @GalleriTest @ExactSciences

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Al Mashal
Al Mashal@al_mashal·
I was reading Sid Sijbrandij cancer journey, the GitLab founder in his forties who went “founder mode” on his own cancer, and it reminded me of why we started Current Surgical. If you ever have a cancer diagnosis, you only want to hear: your cancer is operable. My thoughts: 👇
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Al Mashal
Al Mashal@al_mashal·
@E_Bruxxx Every state’s flagship school produces elite hard tech talent.
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Erik Bruckner
Erik Bruckner@E_Bruxxx·
Universities producing elite hard tech talent: Georgia Tech CMU MIT Michigan Caltech Who did I miss?
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Al Mashal
Al Mashal@al_mashal·
My contrarian take for 2026: give the FDA more resources, specifically to streamline breakthrough medical technologies and therapeutics. The innovations that will actually move the needle on longevity, quality of life, and healthcare costs all require regulatory approval. We can’t be afraid to do the hard things or incentivized not to.
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Al Mashal
Al Mashal@al_mashal·
So pleased that our first face-to-face meeting with the FDA this week was really positive. This is an important milestone for us and helpful confirmation that we’ve outlined the right path forward. I was especially encouraged by the quality of the conversation/engagement. Meetings like this are important to build up trust and ensure ‘regulatory risk’ doesn’t end up being an actual risk.
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Al Mashal
Al Mashal@al_mashal·
Agreed, a new mindset is needed for this space—founders and investors. Most people don't appreciate that some of the early medical technologies have had the biggest impact on longevity in human existence (pacemakers, ultrasound, CT, MRI, stents, and the list goes on and on).
Nick Damiano@nickdamian0

Just met with an elite tier founder starting a techmed company that will create massive value for patients, physicians, and investors. This space is 100x more exciting than medtech and is going to produce several $100B+ companies in the next ten years.

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Al Mashal
Al Mashal@al_mashal·
Key quote: “It’s astonishing that in our day and age, so many stillbirths happen with no identified risk factors. We have watches that track our sleep and stress, but we can’t always tell when a pregnancy is in trouble.” washingtonpost.com/science/2025/1…
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Al Mashal
Al Mashal@al_mashal·
This is personal for us and reflects what we have been discovering over the last year: Sweeping new study confirms U.S. stillbirth rates are higher than reported: 1 in 147 births vs. CDC's 1 in 175. 30% of stillbirths in the U.S. happen with no identifiable risk factors. Even when risk factors are known — there aren’t adequate tools for prevention. Behind every statistic is a family's unimaginable loss. We need to do better.
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Erik Bruckner
Erik Bruckner@E_Bruxxx·
The biggest bottleneck in American hard tech isn’t capital, it’s non-consensus conviction. Most investors want frontier returns without frontier risk. Those betting on the overlooked will be rewarded.
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Al Mashal
Al Mashal@al_mashal·
This is a great advancement from @GrailBio! We must now pair up early detection with curative treatments. There is this growing gap, where our ability to treat with curative intent has not kept pace with diagnosis. Treating cancer should be no more stressful than taking care of a cavity. Excited to be solving this problem @CurrentSurgical!
GRAIL@GrailBio

Results from the PATHFINDER 2 study demonstrate the Galleri multi-cancer early detection test helped increase cancer detection more than seven-fold when added to recommended screenings for breast, cervical, colorectal, and lung cancers. Learn more: bit.ly/4n91cP6 #ESMO25

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Al Mashal
Al Mashal@al_mashal·
I've been reflecting on how this great article by @deenamousa applies to surgery. Similar to radiology, AI & automation will have transformational effect on surgery. We want to turn more clinicians into expert surgeons. And at the same time we want to make more curative surgeries possible and more efficient for more patients—thus growing the number of patients and clinicians (i.e. Javons paradox in surgery). Another takeaway: It's not surprising that the approved models in radiology are struggling in real clinical settings as the data is not broad enough. This is where I believe 'native-ai' tech will win out in healthcare. Training on generic data sets has its limitations.
Deena Mousa@deenamousa

In 2016 Geoffrey Hinton said “we should stop training radiologists now" since AI would soon be better at their jobs. He was right: models have outperformed radiologists on benchmarks for ~a decade. Yet radiology jobs are at record highs, with an average salary of $520k. Why?

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Al Mashal
Al Mashal@al_mashal·
Inspiring to see work in the focused ultrasound space by other scientists and entrepreneurs! FUS in neuro applications is hot right now. Excited about the opportunity, will be interesting to see if the solution ends up geared for research hospitals (due to large equipment, need for MRI, etc.). Looking at the heft of the image below, I’m even more impressed that our team @CurrentSurgical has been able to pack all of this technology into a super thin needle!
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Keşfet

@1517fund @William_Blake @DStrachman @TheHarryGandhi @mattkrisiloff @Conception @AmirMashal @arcturustechinc