America’s new era of private science

Metascience advocates are building private research institutions, many founded in the past five years, as alternatives to university and federal grant funding. Reported facts: China overtook America in the Nature Index in 2024; a 2025 study of 100,000 NIH applications found out-of-consensus projects less likely to be renewed; researchers spend about 44% of their time on administration. A 21 July government report said universities should not be “the only home” of innovative research, the NSF will allocate $1.5bn to a first round of “X-labs”, and a bipartisan bill would do similar at NIH. Convergent Research (founded 2021) funds focused research organisations with $20m-50m over three to seven years; Episteme, launched in 2025 by Sam Altman and Louis Andre, gives lead researchers near-total freedom (the article cites physicist Charles Marcus leaving the University of Washington as an example). Caveats: the Trump administration proposes halving NSF’s FY2027 budget (science adviser Michael Kratsios counters that overall R&D, especially defence, is rising); many questions lie outside commercial scope; and Arena BioWorks (2023) shut in under two years, though Andre says Episteme’s backers are in for the long haul. The Economist argues that federal support, private experiments and AI-fuelled wealth are aligning for private science.