Kumar Garg

There’s recently been a ton of discussion (and some real concern) across the science community about NSF’s new X-Labs program. But I hadn’t seen anyone make the affirmative case for why scaling team science is actually the experiment we need right now. So I wrote it. In short, I’m bullish: fas.org/publication/bu…

The accelerator ends, the work begins. Our @RenPhilanthropy BiTS Americas cohort (supported by @coeff_giving) recently pitched their R&D programs at ExhiBiTS in DC: fermented food as medicine, semiconductors for scientific sensing, resource capture from mining waste, biobanks, + 10 more. Watch their pitches ↓ Read more from the fellows here: renaissancephilanthropy.org/bits-fellows?p…

We need your input! @RenPhilanthropy, with support from Google.org, launched an RFI on how advanced tech can make K-12 #assessment more continuous & actionable. Input shapes funding like #ToolsCompetition. Share your response by 7/31! Link 🔗: tinyurl.com/r99kmxr4

Some bittersweet news to announce today: I recently left @IFP to join @coeff_giving as Managing Director of Public Policy, where I'm building a new US AI policy team, overseeing the Abundance and Growth Fund alongside @mattsclancy, and managing CG's government affairs work. Building IFP has been the defining professional project of my life, and this was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made. In just four and a half years, our team became, pound-for-pound, the most effective think tank in DC. I feel insanely proud of the work we’ve done and the incredible team we’ve assembled. I sometimes joke that when @alecstapp and I launched IFP, we felt like two kids in a trench coat pretending to be a think tank. And now we're a proper institution! But it feels possible to step back now because they've hit escape velocity. The talent density at IFP is bonkers. And I have complete confidence they'll keep racking up counterfactual policy wins with Alec at the helm and our superstar directors. I'm staying on the IFP board and staying in DC. In some sense the new role is a continuation of the old one. All of IFP's policy issues are reflected in CG's portfolio, but now I'm working at a new layer of the stack. So why leave? Because AI is hitting Washington like a tsunami, and DC is still radically underprepared. I hold a lot of uncertainty about timelines, but it seems very plausible that the next 2–10 years will bring the fastest technological upheaval we've ever had to navigate. The new team I’m leading is a bet on how to prepare: proactively scanning the horizon, identifying gaps in the policy ecosystem, headhunting founders, and launching new organizations, while strengthening the democratic institutions that will have to steer through the transition to powerful AI systems. I've written an essay laying out the larger vision here: calebwatney.substack.com/p/a-long-seque… There is no master plan or silver bullet here. I suspect getting AI "right" is going to feel more like a chaotic, iterative process of institutions trying to make better decisions over time as the facts change underneath them. As John von Neumann wrote in 1955 about mastering an earlier technological revolution: “What safeguard remains? Apparently only day-to-day — or perhaps year-to-year — opportunistic measures, a long sequence of small, correct decisions.” Each of the small, correct decisions ahead will look small only in the sweep of the full historical picture. Up close, every one of them will require heroic levels of effort and coordination. Coefficient Giving is scaling rapidly to meet the moment, part of what Nan Ransohoff has called the “third wave of American philanthropy”, potentially large enough to fund thousands of new projects and organizations. The binding constraint is unlikely to be money. It will be people: grantmakers and policy entrepreneurs and others with the judgment to make a long sequence of small, correct decisions, and the ambition to build the institutions we wish we had. I'm hiring a team of exactly those people, starting with generalist grant makers and a chief of staff. If you share this vision, please apply! And if you are building something that we’ll need in the years ahead, reach out. jobs.ashbyhq.com/coefficientgiv…

1/ I am so excited to announce the @ukdynamism Fund today, anchored by @xtxmarkets, and led by @andrewjb_ . I've had the pleasure of helping to build this over several months, and I'm excited about it for a number of reasons:

We're delighted to launch the Northwest Arkansas Innovation Fund at @RenPhilanthropy, with the aim of expanding jobs and talent in one of America's fastest-growing regions. With support from the @WaltonFamilyFdn, the nonprofit philanthropic fund led by Michael Basch will catalyze new businesses and develop local talent with two programs ↓

Neonatal sepsis kills one newborn every 45 seconds, or 400,000-700,000 deaths per year. A rapid, accurate point-of-care test could save 100,000-280,000 newborn lives in low and middle-income countries and reduce the unnecessary use of antibiotics by more than half. @CGDev has a thoughtful, detailed proposal for a $60 million fund to accelerate the development and adoption of an effective test, including an Advance Market Commitment. I hope philanthropists will consider supporting this! See a link to the proposal in the replies.

It is necessary for me to acknowledge @RenPhilanthropy and their Big If True Science Fellowship. It was a crash course in how coordinated, mission-driven science actually gets built: how you identify an ambitious objective, assemble the right people, define milestones, and attack problems no single lab could solve alone. The mentorship of Prof Michael Fiddy changed how I think about science, across countless conversations about strategy, coordination, and how breakthrough research programs are really made. I had the opportunity to discuss science with people at @DARPA including @mkoeris and Jim Gimlett, who generously shared their experience and challenged many of my assumptions. My thanks to Jean-Paul Chretien, @AlesFlidr and @benwandrew and the whole Renaissance Philanthropy team!

✨ Announcing fast grants for British progress ✨ Have an idea for how to drive growth and progress in Britain? We’re making small grants for research, policy and other projects, with funding decisions in just two weeks. No academic affiliation required. Need some prompting to start cooking? We’ve got a list of questions we’d love people to tackle - on topics like devolution, AI diffusion, financial regulation and more… Apply here: britishprogress.org/news/fast-gran… More on why we’re doing this: open.substack.com/pub/britishpro…

You can make your own prestige! I've been thinking about this in the context of publishing, especially with @AsimovPress, but suspect it applies to other domains, too. The earliest instantiation of Asimov Press was just a Substack blog. We took my existing newsletter (called "Codon") and rebranded it to "Asimov Press." The latter name sounds fancy; it has the word 'Press' right there in the title! Then, we sent out a newsletter saying, "We're not a blog anymore. We are a publishing company, and you should take us seriously!" We set up a website, hired a designer to make it pretty, and started posting articles there. Next, we raised some money (a signal that is usually positively correlated with doing something useful). We printed books and started hiring designers and copyeditors to spruce up our work. All of these things helped increase our perceived "prestige." On day one, though, Asimov Press was none of these things! It was really just a blog. We didn't have any deep editorial experience. We learned everything on the job, and solved each problem (like how to pay writers, find a printer, or do marketing) as it arose. By taking ourselves seriously, though, others also began to take us seriously. We had a high bar, internally, for our work. For every three articles we published, we "killed" another. And all of a sudden, Asimov Press felt like a legit thing. Pitches came in; a few each week in year one, and maybe ~50+ per week by the end of year two. It was no longer a blog, but something more. The speed at which this transition from "just a blog" to "actual publishing company" happened was surprising to me. In journalism school, my professors often insinuated that getting a staff writer position was really great, getting an editor position might be feasible after a few years, and *starting* a publishing company is .... not even worth discussing. TL;DR: You can make your own prestige. If you write a Substack blog, consider publishing a book, too. Or make a website. Or raise some money and hire artists to spruce up your work. Or find an editor who can improve your writing. All of these things are small levers toward a deeper level of seriousness. This only works if you take yourself seriously, too. Readers will not respect the work -- even if you print a bunch of books and pay artists to make pretty things -- unless you respect the quality of your own work even more. (Photo: Our team, including @AlexandraBalwit, shipping out book #2 from my dining room table.)

Help end childhood lead poisoning through better testing. @RenPhilanthropy's @robbiebarbero and @CHAI_health have been working with global experts to draft a target product profile for an affordable, point-of-care blood lead level screening test. This test could help reach the 1 in 3 children worldwide with elevated blood lead levels, who currently have no access to testing. The draft is open for public comment until July 8, 2026, and all feedback is confidential. forms.office.com/Pages/Response…

The pandemic taught a critical lesson on the importance of clean air, especially in schools. At @RenPhilanthropy, we are designing a Clean Air for Schools Fund to catalyze investments that improve health outcomes and carry economic benefits. Great to see @ARPA_H helping lead the way, and our own @davidcarel in @nytimes on the urgency of getting this right. nytimes.com/2026/06/19/sci…

I joined @Stripe in January to build a new philanthropic initiative with @nanransohoff. Today we’re announcing Intercept, a $500m innovation fund focused on radically reducing the burden of respiratory viruses. I’ve spent the past decade investing in vaccines and drugs for infectious disease, and this is the most exciting thing I’ve ever been a part of. Thrilled to be working with @Stripe, @AnthropicAI, @TheFluLab, @FoundationOAI, @coeff_giving and individuals from Jane Street. We've raised the capital and now it’s time to get to work.