Altman and Masa Back a 27-Year-Old's Plan to Build a New Bell Labs Ultra (www.corememory.com)

Louis Andre, a 27-year-old neuroscientist/CS researcher, has launched Episteme — a San Francisco research outfit backed by Sam Altman, Masayoshi Son and other undisclosed investors — that aims to recreate a modern Bell Labs/Xerox PARC. Episteme will hire and pay top researchers, provide lab space and operational support (IP, taxes, hiring), give staff equity, and help translate long-horizon science into products. The company has identified ~2,400 potential recruits, is starting with 15 scientists across AI, energy, materials, computation and neuroscience, and has brought on advisers and hires from institutions like the Gates Foundation and the Department of Energy. Early joins include Ben Angulo (gene and cell therapy), and selection hinges on scientific substance, execution ability, and a researcher’s “theory of change.” For the AI/ML and wider R&D community, Episteme is significant because it explicitly targets two chronic bottlenecks: academic bureaucracy/grant cycles and VC-driven short time horizons. By funding fundamental, cross-disciplinary work and surrounding scientists with commercialization and operational expertise, it could accelerate foundational advances (e.g., new materials, energy systems, novel computational approaches) that require multi-year incubation. Risks remain—founder/investor attention can fade, pressure for commercial returns may reappear, and past high-profile experiments have had mixed results—but Episteme positions itself as a “third way” between academia and industry that could reshape how high-risk, high-reward AI and science projects are incubated.