Ryan Knudson

Among the tools he envisioned in this Gattaca stack was embryo editing for, quote, disease prevention or enhancement.

People who were at that embryo editing dinner told Emily that enhancements were a topic of conversation.

And there was also some thinking out loud about strategy, how to introduce embryo editing to the world.

A spokeswoman for Armstrong said that he did mention the idea of working in secret, but that he also said it was someone else's idea, and that he and others at the dinner agreed it was a bad one.

To Emily, it wasn't immediately clear how serious this dinner conversation had been.

Was this all just talk, or something more?

And then she got a tip.

An actual embryo editing company.

And not only that, but one of the biggest names in Silicon Valley was connected to it.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

And that gets your attention.

That's next.

Emily and her colleagues wanted to know more about this mysterious embryo editing company, but they didn't have much to go on.

Just that it had an office in the San Francisco WeWork, and that it had hired somebody from a prestigious lab.

Emily didn't even have a name for the company.

So one of her colleagues started digging through corporate filings.

Emily and her colleagues were able to confirm that both Sam Altman and Coinbase's Brian Armstrong were investors in Preventive, though they weren't able to find out how much they'd invested.

And when it came to Preventive's plans... We learned a few things.

So preventive sounds like they're doing real stuff.

Emily and her colleagues also heard from a couple scientists who said they'd been personally pitched on getting involved in embryo editing.