As federal science funding continues to shrink under the Trump administration, venture firm Lux Capital has pledged at least $100 million to help American scientists keep their research alive, with the potential to commercialize it.
The initiative, announced last week, will provide both funding and direct support to academic scientists struggling with disappearing grants, disrupted careers and stalled experiments. The aim is to transition promising work into new companies or private labs.
“We are offering both counsel and currency to the most pathbreaking scientists we can find,” the firm stated in its announcement, published May 8. “Our goal is to help accelerate American science by saving and investing in the scientists who make it all happen.”
The timing is pointed. Just over 100 days into President Trump’s second term, the National Institutes of Health Innovation Fund has been slashed by nearly 70 percent, and thousands of scientists have been laid off from federally funded agencies. While researchers scramble to find alternative funding sources, some have already left academia or moved abroad (see “Mayhem, Destruction and Biomedical Tumult from Trump Cuts”).
Private-sector opportunity for health innovation’s long run
Lux sees this moment as a private-sector opportunity. It’s pitching the fund not as a venture capital play, but as a “helpline” for scientists. According to the announcement, the new $100 million commitment will support the creation of startups or alternative paths forward for researchers struggling with issues ranging from funding, immigration or other resource problems.
“Perhaps a grant just got cut: what are the alternatives? Maybe a visa didn’t get renewed: could our global network of scientists and peers find another way forward? Perhaps a result has been validated but is still conceptually very early: are there ways to structure and fund a private company to realize the research?” the company said in its announcement.
The firm says its approach isn’t about short-term profits but “long-horizon funding” that connects breakthrough ideas with the infrastructure and talent needed to turn them into real-world products.
Scientists may apply even if they’ve never considered an entrepreneurial route. Lux says it’s ready to help them assess whether their work could be viable as a company, and then guide them through incorporation, hiring, technology transfer, and more.
“There’s often a persistent self-doubt among scientists — always one more experiment, one more check of the data,” the firm said. “We, on the other hand, don’t doubt them.”
Lux has already helped spin out companies like Variant Bio, Osmo and Kurion, and partnered with well-known researchers including Nobel laureates and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators. But this latest fund expands the firm’s focus beyond elite institutions to reach scientists in crisis, particularly those whose grants have been revoked or labs shuttered.
International competition for US scientists heats up
The move also comes against a backdrop of rising international competition. China’s government has rapidly increased its investment in critical and emerging technologies, with a state goal of overtaking the United States in scientific dominance by 2035 (see “U.S. Urged to Invest $15 Billion in Biotech to Counter China”). Trump’s tariffs have also strained scientific research budgets, while his announcement to bring “Most-Favored Nation” drug pricing to the U.S. has also split the industry.
Lux sees the retreat of U.S. public science funding as a national security risk. “We’re watching it play out in semiconductor lithography tools, large-model GPUs, CRISPR crops that can withstand drought and much more,” the firm wrote. “America’s private sector needs to take aggressive and urgent action.”
Unlike policy think tanks or lobbying groups, Lux is positioning itself as a pragmatic actor. “We do not lecture Congress on appropriations, nor berate agencies working under fiscal constraint,” the firm said.
“America can’t afford its best minds abandoning the frontiers of discovery,” the company wrote. “We don’t want a scientist with a burning passion for the future of their field to be waylaid in their pursuit, undermining America’s standing in the world.”