Reproductive startup launches test to identify an embryo’s genetic defects before an IVF pregnancy begins

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2 years ago

December 5, 2023

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Noor Siddiqui, founder and CEO of Orchid, during the web summit for careers during Day 2 of the 2014 Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland, Nov. 5, 2014.

Stephen McCarthy | Getty Images

Reproductive technology startup Orchid on Tuesday announced a comprehensive new genetic test that may help many prospective parents across the U.S. breathe a little easier.

The company is launching the first commercially available whole genome sequencing report for embryos, designed for couples undergoing in vitro fertilization, which is a type of treatment for people experiencing infertility or who are at risk of passing on genetic problems.

With IVF, after a woman has had around two weeks of daily hormone injections, her mature eggs are extracted and fertilized in a lab, and the viable embryos are later transferred into the uterus.

Orchid said its new test will help couples identify whether their embryos present genetic risks such as birth defects, neurodevelopmental disorders, chromosomal abnormalities, or pediatric and adult-onset cancers that were previously only detectable after birth.

“This is a major advance in the amount of information parents can have,” Noor Siddiqui, Orchid’s founder and CEO, told CNBC in an interview. “The way that you can use that information is really up to you, but it gives a lot more control and confidence into a process that, for all of history, has just been totally left to chance.”

Orchid’s technology sequences more than 99% of an embryo’s genome, while existing tests typically read around .25%, the company said in a release.

IVF is a taxing process that can cost an average of more than $12,000 in the U.S., according to the Institute for Reproductive Health. Success is not guaranteed, and some people go through multiple rounds of IVF before a pregnancy develops.

Orchid’s genetic test will cost couples an additional $2,500 per embryo sequenced, but it does not add any new steps or risks to the IVF process, Siddiqui said. She added that the cost of the report should come down as the company is able to scale up its operations and introduce more automation.

“We want to make this something that’s accessible to everyone,” Siddiqui said.

Beginning Tuesday, Orchid’s technology will be available at IVF clinics in major cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Austin, and Siddiqui said Orchid can be made available at additional clinics at the request of patients.

Couples will receive their report back from Orchid after about three weeks, the company said, and a board-certified genetic counselor will help them understand the results.

Orchid’s whole genome embryo report

Courtesy: Orchid

Orchid has secured $12 million in funding from investors such as Prometheus Fund and Refactor Capital. Anne Wojcicki, the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe; Dylan Field, the co-founder and CEO of Figma; Fidji Simo, the CEO of Instacart; Brian Armstrong, the co-founder CEO of Coinbase, and others are also backers.

For many hopeful parents, the peace of mind is worth Orchid’s steep price.

Roshan George, a 35-year-old engineer in San Francisco, began the IVF process with his wife, Julie, in the fall.

George said they were feeling some anxiety about having a baby at an older age, and their nerves were amplified after their IVF clinic discovered they are both carriers for nonsyndromic hearing loss, which can result in a partial or total loss of hearing.

George had heard of Orchid through some friends, he said, and the couple decided to sequence all three of their viable embryos with the company. He said getting the embryos tested was very straightforward, and when the results came back, they discovered that two out of the three embryos were healthy.

“We were super relieved right off the bat,” George told CNBC in an interview. “That was very gratifying to hear.”

“Just having some degree of certainty — you’re going to make sure they’re not sick when they’re born and all that sort of stuff — it’s a huge amount of anxiety that’s been lifted off,” George said.

George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, is an investor and an adviser at Orchid. Church developed the first direct genome sequencing method, he said, and Orchid’s technology will give parents the ability to access a hundred times more information about their baby than they could attain previously.

Church said it is “perfectly logical” for parents to care about helping their children, whether it pertains to their genetic health, the quality of their food or whether they get enough sleep and exercise.

He added that people often think that genetic risks don’t apply to them, or that there’s nothing they can do if something is wrong. But with Orchid, Church said parents have the detailed information they need to make informed decisions.

“If you went to Las Vegas with a 97% chance of winning, you would definitely go to Las Vegas,” Church told CNBC in an interview. “But it’s different when you’re talking about quarters as opposed to children.”

Orchid’s primary focus after the launch Tuesday will be on scaling up its technology and making it more accessible, Siddiqui said.

She said Orchid has spent an “enormous amount of effort” identifying the mutations that will cause severe disease during pregnancy or early childhood or result in serious chronic conditions. She wanted to ensure the company is able to provide parents with information that is “super meaningful.”

“I think this has the potential to totally redefine reproduction,” Siddiqui said. “I just think that’s really exciting to be able to make people more confident about one of the most important decisions of their life, and to give them a little bit more control.”

Technology

Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Published

1 day ago

July 11, 2025

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Technology

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Published

2 days ago

July 11, 2025

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Published

2 days ago

July 11, 2025

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.