by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his new husband, Oliver Mulherin, have joined Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong in backing a controversial new Silicon Valley startup called Preventive, a company openly pursuing CRISPR-based embryo gene editing to "end hereditary disease."

Behind the polished language lies a darker reality: this marks the first step toward commercialized designer babies, a form of genetic engineering explicitly banned under U.S. law and condemned across most of the world.

Preventive has raised $30 million, established a lab in San Francisco, and is exploring foreign jurisdictions like the UAE, where such experiments might move forward under looser oversight.