Arc Institute's Patrick Hsu on CRISPR, AI-designed organisms and betting on people
thesephist · x · 2026-10-16
Dialectic podcast episode 60 interviews Patrick Hsu, core investigator at Arc Institute. Expelled from college at 13 and back at 15, he worked on early CRISPR breakthroughs and co-founded Arc with SKonermann and Patrick Collison, now juggling three roles: Arc investigator, Stanford professor, and Thrive Capital venture partner. Topics: why research is 99% failure, infinite games and speedrunning school, the reach of GLP-1s and power laws in biotech, Arc's bet on people over projects, lab robots that finally work, AI-designed organisms and new forms of life, and why heart disease could go the way of infectious disease.
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