SecureBio

Cambridge, MA, USA

established41 peopleFounded 2022

SecureBio is a 501(c)(3) biosecurity nonprofit founded in 2022 by MIT professor Kevin Esvelt, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The organization employs a Delay, Detect, Defend framework to address catastrophic biological risks, including threats amplified by advances in AI. Its three core programs are: evaluating frontier AI models for biosecurity-relevant capabilities (the AI & Biotechnology Risks team), pioneering wastewater-based metagenomic surveillance for early pathogen detection (the Nucleic Acid Observatory), and supporting free, privacy-preserving DNA synthesis screening to prevent misuse (SecureDNA, now an independent Swiss foundation). SecureBio collaborates with all major frontier AI labs, government agencies including NIST, and academic institutions.

Funding Details

Annual Budget: $7,324,329
Monthly Burn Rate: $354,322
Current Runway: -
Funding Goal: -
Funding Raised to Date: $15,079,587
Fiscal Sponsor: -

Theory of Change

SecureBio's theory of change rests on the premise that advances in biotechnology and AI are making it increasingly feasible for malicious actors to create or acquire pandemic-capable pathogens, potentially leading to catastrophic or existential-level biological events. Their Delay-Detect-Defend framework addresses this by: (1) Delaying threats through DNA synthesis screening that prevents would-be bad actors from obtaining dangerous biological material, (2) Detecting novel pathogens early through pathogen-agnostic wastewater surveillance before they can spread to more than 1% of the population, giving civilization time to respond, and (3) Defending through physical and institutional measures that work regardless of the specific pathogen. On the AI front, SecureBio believes that rigorous evaluation of frontier AI models for biosecurity-relevant capabilities, combined with targeted mitigations like pretraining data filtering, can reduce the risk that AI systems become force multipliers for bioweapons development. By making these evaluations standard practice across all frontier labs, they aim to create an industry-wide norm of biosecurity responsibility.