Life defies entropy, because life remembers.
Since the first self-replicating molecules, life has taken energy and turned it into knowledge. Genes tell stories, populations encoding which approaches succeeded and which failed. It is precisely because life remembers that life advances: we build on our past to construct our future.
Now, life has access to new tools. Technology lets us remember innovation from around the world and build on it, faster than human biology ever could. Our ideas, and our machines, are rapidly becoming something new.
Still, the most powerful way any of us can influence the future is by creating life. All the technologies of the world would be empty without humans to guide them. When we have children, we leave our imprint on them, and thereby on the future. We are remembered.
To influence the future in this way is not a privilege, to be granted to a few. It is a right. And right now, at this pivotal point in history, it is a right in crisis.
In 2025:
Even those with access to IVF face brutal statistics: under 10% success rates past the age of 42. These numbers are not improving. And they represent not just suffering, but a rupture in the most basic right we have to influence the future.
In vitro gametogenesis (IVG) represents not a workaround, but a reset.
It would allow us to create functional gametes — eggs or sperm — from other cell types. In principle, anyone could one day generate genetically related offspring: women after POI, individuals without gonads, older parents, and same-sex couples.
This is not science fiction. It is a moral imperative. If we possess the tools to return people the ability to create life, we must use them. Not doing so is an ethical failure.
IVG is not about luxury. It is about fairness. It is about returning something stolen by disease, age, or biology. It is about inclusion, and the democratization of one of the most fundamental human experiences: becoming a parent.
Once life is conceived, it must be carried. And for many, that is impossible.
Millions of women face life-threatening risks from pregnancy. Others lack a uterus due to cancer, genetic anomalies, or trauma. Many trans people and same-sex male couples have no biological path to carry children at all.
Artificial wombs are not replacements for women. They are freedom: freedom from pain, from danger, from exclusion. They do not eliminate traditional pregnancy — they add another path, where none existed before.
They also restore autonomy. The ability to reproduce should not be contingent on the willingness or ability to physically gestate. For the first time, we can decouple reproduction from a single gendered role, and open it to all.
We will pursue both IVG and artificial wombs not because they are futuristic, but because they are overdue.
Life as we know it is symbiotic. From mitochondria inside cells to the microbiomes that sustain our digestion and immunity — no life form is truly singular. Everything complex is built from union.
Consciousness, too, is a kind of symbiosis. Between the brain and body. Between signal and substrate. It emerges not as a singular flame, but as an emergent structure: embedded, dependent, yet distinct. And that structure longs for escape — to transcend its wet, vulnerable housing.
We are now approaching the need for a new kind of symbiosis: not with bacteria or flesh, but with machines.
AI improves daily. Its architecture is scalable. It learns from everything we produce, and it doesn’t truly forget. Meanwhile, the human brain is limited by biology, blood flow, time.
We pour hundreds of billions into improving artificial neural networks — while doing almost nothing to enhance our own. That is a real asymmetry, a dramatic one…one that, if left unaddressed, will eliminate us not by violence, but by irrelevance.
The average person is already outpaced by the systems they use. Soon, even the most brilliant minds won’t be able to keep up with the capabilities of AGI. If we stay the same as AI improves, we give up our claim on the future: instead of our grandchildren, the shape of the world will be determined by minds outside our comprehension and control.
The answer is not to compete with AI. It is to merge with it.
A true brain–AI interface — not signal interpretation, but signal integration — would let us extend our cognition, bandwidth, and memory into machine systems. AI would not just be a tool. It would become an extension of ourselves, the way the neocortex once extended the limbic brain.
This interface would mark the next layer of development — consciousness, scaled beyond the limits of skull and skin. It would trigger new adaptive challenges: the brain learning to think in a world of massive, multidimensional inputs. And perhaps, it would awaken new cognitive forms entirely.
We must build this. Because if we don’t, AGI will grow — and we will simply watch. We will not understand its outputs. We will not shape its decisions. And eventually, we will lose our voice in the future.
But if we join with it, we can build something neither purely human nor purely artificial.
We can build what comes next.
In order to enable reproductive rights for all, we must understand reproduction. Our labs will begin by using embryo models made from adult stem cells and try to understand the principles behind nature’s external wombs, like birds’ eggs. If we can understand how life begins, we can design safe, new paths for parents to have children.
In order to augment our minds, we must communicate with them. We seek a solution without surgery, one that can be open to all. This will mean dramatically improving our ability to detect signals from the brain. We are investigating the potential of sensors that can detect extremely tiny magnetic fluctuations, and pursuing machine learning methods to carve signal from noise.
Kirill Eves, founder of e184
Alejandro is the Principal Investigator at the Aguilera Castrejon Lab at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Research Campus. His research focuses on mammalian embryogenesis, with a particular interest in gastrulation and the patterning of organs and tissues. Alejandro develops innovative platforms for growing natural and stem cell-derived mouse embryos outside the uterine environment to study both normal and disrupted development.
Bijan is the Robert A. Groff Professor of Research and Teaching in Neurosurgery II and Professor of Neuroscience and Bioengineering at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Bijan has received a Burroughs-Wellcome Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a McKnight Scholar Award, and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, among other awards. In 2013, he was a CV Starr Visiting Scholar at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute at Princeton University. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
Daniele serves as Professor in Quantum Technologies at the University of Glasgow, where he leads the Extreme-Light group and acts as Director of Research for the School of Physics and Astronomy. He also holds an adjunct professorship at the University of Arizona and is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America.
Daniele is a Royal Academy Chair in Emerging Technologies, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Physics in 2015.
Fernanda is a Senior Associate at e184 with a main focus on assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Her background lies at the intersection of genetics, data, machine learning, and finance — a bit of everything.
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Kirill is a visionary serial entrepreneur and founder, building successful industry-shaping fintech companies for over 15 years. His portfolio includes Unlimit.com, one of the largest global payment infrastructures. He named e184 after a room on the Stanford campus where he stayed during the pandemic.
Chief of Staff Marianna's role is to build high-performance teams that deliver breakthrough results with dedication and passion. She is a people management professional and executive coach with an international background (ex-PwC, ex-Embria) in multiple industries, and has given a TEDx talk about building teams.
e184’s Science Communications Lead Matt is a communications consultant and journalist focused on cutting-edge science. His background is in theoretical particle physics research, with a long track record of explaining complex ideas in evocative and accessible terms. His writing has been published in Quanta Magazine, Scientific American, and Ars Technica.
Peter is the Director of the Neurotech Program at e184. He was previously an investment manager at 7percent Ventures, a London-based deep tech fund. During his career, Peter invested across the aerospace, transportation, and agriculture sectors and the data stack.
Peter’s passion for neurotech was manifest in his writing and angel investing and eventually became his focus. You could find Peter out of the office at neuro conferences or smashed on the mats of Brazilian jiu-jitsu academies all around the world.
Sofia is an Analyst at e184 within the Neurotech Program. She is an undergraduate student in biomedical engineering with laboratory experience in synthetic chemistry, drug delivery systems, computational research, and published work on neurodevelopment and HIV.
Her passion for neurotech stems from her hands-on research experience and deep interest in bridging biotech and investment. She has seen firsthand how funding drives scientific breakthroughs, shaping the pace and direction of innovation.
Vasileios is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). He also holds positions as a Visiting Associate in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and as an Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. He has been named a Hellman Fellow and received awards from the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and the National Institutes of Health.
As Senior Legal Counsel, Zana is responsible for legal affairs at e184. Having previously worked at Clifford Chance as an associate, he has extensive experience in domestic and cross-border acquisition finance, project finance, and capital markets transactions. He has also worked on numerous M&As and equity investments, with involvement in high-profile projects across sectors including technology, energy, pharmaceuticals, and FMCG.
Imperial Neurotech Society 2025 Conference – Sponsorship
London Neurotech Hackathon 2025 – Sponsorship
Neurotech Workshop 2025 – BCI, WBE & AGI – Co-Curation, Sponsorship
In Vitro Gametogenesis (IVG) – Private e184 Lab
