Stripe-led $500M nonprofit Intercept aims to eliminate colds and flu

Stripe, alongside Anthropic, the OpenAI Foundation, Bill Gates, and Jane Street Capital, has launched Intercept, a $500 million nonprofit dedicated to preventing and ultimately eradicating respiratory infections like the common cold and flu. The initiative is led by Stripe executive Nan Ransohoff and venture capitalist Charlie Petty, and draws inspiration from Stripe's previous $1.8 billion Frontier program for carbon removal. Intercept will use grants and investments to support broad-spectrum vaccines, large-scale air-cleaning systems using UV light, and other technologies like engineered proteins that can be sprayed in nasal passages to catch viruses before infection. The effort is motivated by the fact that over 200 different viruses cause the common cold, making single-vaccine development economically unattractive for pharmaceutical companies.

David Veesler, a structural biologist at the University of Washington, convinced the team that modern tools—RNA drugs, antibodies, and computational protein design—make broad countermeasures technically feasible. Intercept's advisors include former FDA official Peter Marks and Operation Warp Speed leader Moncef Slaoui. The organization aims to treat respiratory viruses like municipal water treatment, removing them from the air in public spaces. With NIAID's budget stagnant, private philanthropy fills a critical gap. If successful, Intercept could dramatically reduce the 5% of lifetime people spend sick, saving billions in lost productivity and healthcare costs.