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AN EMERSON COLLECTIVE PUBLICATION

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Positive Sum No. 03

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Introduction FieldAI California Forever Yosemite Antora Amplify OpenAI

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AU TOM ATI N G ATOM S

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“I propose to consider the question, ‘Can machines think?’”

In this deceptively simple opening question from Alan Turing’s 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” the word thinking was the proxy for a more nuanced heuristic: Can a machine imitate human responses well enough to be indistinguishable from a real person in conversation? Colloquially known as the Turing Test, an emergent artificial intelligence community— including landmark Dartmouth Conference (1956) organizers John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon, and others—had been aiming to address this question by building computers that could

“use language, form abstractions and concepts” for decades. Nearly 75 years later, after an apparent neverending series of hype cycles, OpenAI’s ChatGPT entered the scene. Immediately after launching, it integrated itself into our daily lives (as of this writing, ChatGPT has over 750 million users and is growing rapidly), from supercharging white-collar work to supplementing—and even simulating— personal therapy. We had passed the Turing Test—and nobody noticed. 9

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The Brains on the Robots

The Physical Turing Test How quickly humanity moved on from this colossal scientific achievement, barely taking stock of both what had happened and was now possible. However, many technologists, appreciating how groundbreaking this moment was, had already been pursuing the next frontier. In the spring of 2025, NVIDIA’s Jim Fan articulated the idea of a “Physical Turing Test” as the new benchmark for artificial intelligence. This new Imitation Game would be a logical extension of Turing’s original, challenging robots to perform real-world tasks—like cleaning a messy home and preparing a candlelit dinner—so seamlessly that

observers could not distinguish their results from those of humans. This concept shifts the focus from conversational AI to “embodied intelligence,” emphasizing the need for robots to perceive, plan, and act within complex physical environments—all without a rote set of instructions to follow. In Fan’s words, building a computing platform that “automates chunks of atoms instead of chunks of bits.” This is precisely what Dr. Ali Agha, Founder and CEO of FieldAI, has been building toward his entire career.

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The Physical Turing Test stroPthis gnicolossal ggubeD How quickly humanity moved on from scientific achievement, barely taking stock of both what had happened and was now possible. However, many technologists, appreciating how groundbreaking this moment was, had already been pursuing the next frontier. In the spring of 2025, NVIDIA’s Jim Fan articulated the idea of a “Physical Turing Test” as the new benchmark for artificial intelligence. This new Imitation Game would be a logical extension of Turing’s original, challenging robots to perform real-world tasks—like cleaning a messy home and preparing a candlelit dinner—so seamlessly that

observers could not distinguish their results from those of humans. This concept shifts the focus from conversational intelligence,” rotcennoAI C dto aol“embodied yaP emphasizing the need for robots to perceive, plan, and act within complex physical environments—all without a rote set of instructions to follow. In Fan’s words, building a computing platform that “automates chunks of atoms instead of chunks of bits.” This is precisely what Dr. Ali Agha, Founder and CEO of FieldAI, has been building toward his entire career.

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EMERSON COLLECTIVE

From Robot Mice to Mars As a teenager, Agha discovered a passion for coding, machine intelligence, and robots. Upon entering university, he was leading a team developing robots for the RoboCup Small Size Robot Soccer League. Fascinated by DARPA Grand Challenges, he doubled down on robotic autonomy and pursued the more ambitious RoboCup Rescue Robot League. There, his underdog team won the Best Mobility award in Atlanta, beating others from some of the world’s top engineering schools. Agha went on to earn his PhD from Texas A&M, immersing himself in the foundations of robotics— mathematics, probability, AI, and algorithmic control—all while advancing methods for reliable autonomy in unpredictable environments. He then joined MIT, studying swarms of robots that could coordinate like flocks of birds. Still drawn to realworld deployment, he moved to Qualcomm and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he led breakthrough autonomy projects for space

exploration, spanning prototype Mars HelicopterRover coordination to “search for life” missions with quadruped robots in Mars-analog caves. The DARPA challenges that once sparked Agha’s passion and seemed out of reach returned to view: he was selected as the only principal investigator to lead the Subterranean Challenge and DARPA RACER (Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency), two of the nation’s flagship ground autonomy programs of the past decade. His team went on to win the Urban Circuit of the DARPA SubT Challenge worldwide, which wasn’t just a technically grueling effort of embodimentagnostic AI and multi-robot autonomy—it was a physical test unlike what most people have ever experienced. Weeks underground, Agha and his team deployed walking robots, wheeled rovers, and aerial drones to autonomously navigate coal mines, lava tubes, and complex industrial environments.

Dr. Ali Agha holds robot payload.

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Many from that same team, a collection of the best and brightest from NASA, Google DeepMind, and SpaceX, would later follow him into his next chapter at FieldAI. “I was always building teams, building something, like a little startup within another institution,” says Agha. “Founding FieldAI was the best decision I’ve ever made in my career. It most aligns with my nature and how we work.” 15

WHAT ROBOTS SEE FieldAI-enabled robots capture and report high-precision thermal, acoustic, and gauge readings of critical equipment.

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Robots have long captured the imagination, from Stanford Research Institute’s Shakey the Robot and its clumsy navigation in the 1960s to Boston Dynamics’ headless dog opening doors in 2018. Throughout this era, the intersection of AI and robotics has primarily focused on perception, or a robot’s ability to sense, perceive, understand, and act on its environment, and

manipulation, or how a robot physically interacts with its environment through grasping, moving, and touching. Founded in 2023, FieldAI’s initial focus is on autonomous robotic operation in unstructured environments—or a robot’s ability to determine its position in an environment, plan an optimal mission to move from its current location to a desired goal, 20

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avoid obstacles, and interact with the world to carry out its mission. Outside of self-driving cars or basic navigation capabilities, there have been few companies tackling this problem, especially in unstructured, dynamic environments. It’s a mind-bendingly complex challenge: to have fleets of autonomously operating robots in the real world

without GPS, predefined maps, or preprogrammed routes, allowing them to be deployed at scale and with minimalto-no human intervention for nearly any application. This is all about building the best “brains on the bots,” and for them to be deployable in the real world.

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According to Agha, the time was ripe to pursue this ambition, resulting from three massive technology waves crashing together. First, the commoditization of robot hardware: a million-dollar humanoid robot from a decade ago now costs less than $10,000, and quadrupeds are now as low as $3,000. Second, foundation computer models—like LLMs for text and image creation—paved the way for FieldAI to build its own Field Foundation Models for physical autonomy. And third, edge compute power improvements finally made it possible for robots to run complex AI in the field, with no need for GPS, maps, or cloud servers. Add to that a white-hot market desperate for solutions—like construction firms staring down a 40,000-worker labor shortage in just one region alone—and the opportunity was undeniable. Cheap, accessible robots. Breakthrough foundational AI. Lightweight edge computers that run advanced autonomy. And a market screaming for solutions. All Agha needed was a team, and as it turned out, he’d been building an all-star lineup for years: “The time was right. And I was fortunate that over 20 of the megastars that I have worked with in various institutions all came and joined me for this journey.” For Chief Scientific Officer Shayegan “Shy” Omidshafiei, who met Agha as a PhD student at MIT, “it was a matter of when, not if” when describing whether to join Agha in starting a company. And it was the initial name of the company that signaled their ambitions to build something of consequence.

“the work happening here, it’s a clear positive-net win for humanity. It’s not like the ethical gray area of a lot of the other AI work.” Dong-Ki Kim, a Staff Research Scientist who studied under Omidshafiei at MIT, states it simply: “I want to create an AI that can save lives.” Their work is shaped by a belief that trust, safety, and adaptability are prerequisites for that kind of impact, which can only be realized through real-world deployment. And they are relentless about that deployment. Drawing on decades of experience from premier research and technology institutions, the team is obsessed with turning deep research—like uncertainty awareness— into products that actually work on real job sites. Agha again: “The robots’ risk awareness directly translates to trust. When it doesn’t understand something, it knows that it doesn’t know. Then you start trusting it more. And this is, I believe, the number-one reason that we have been able to deploy robots in the customer workflow.” While many companies test in controlled labs or simulated environments, FieldAI thrives in the complexity of dynamic, unpredictable, “embodied” environments. Its customers include construction, energy, and other sectors with severe labor shortages and a number of dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs. Take construction. Many general contractors send someone on their teams to document or map the worksite at the end of every day, with a camera capturing it all—on top of their heads. By comparison, FieldAI– enabled robots operating today completely automate this process, providing reliable and cost-effective ways to help GCs stay on top of progress and avoid critical and costly mistakes, even when they’re not on site. But deployments take teamwork—between robots (in a “multiagent model” enabling multiple robots to operate cohesively in unstructured environments) and especially between robots and humans.

AI for Humanity A brief conversation with any FieldAI team member reveals that there is something deeper to their work. For starters, the company’s legal name is AI for Humanity. They see their technology as a way to augment labor, improve safety, and reduce waste in sectors suffering from workforce shortages and high-risk tasks. Max Smith, Senior Research Scientist on the team, notes that

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“Our goal is to build a general-purpose robotic brain that matures over time.” —Dr. Ali Agha

A Robot Named Nugget When the company deployed its robots on live construction sites, the team anticipated deep skepticism, or worse. “I was pretty nervous about someone saying ‘You’re taking my job’—and kicking the robot or breaking it. Zero of that has happened,” says Agha. Instead of rejection, the machines were greeted like celebrities. Workers pulled out their phones, snapped selfies, and asked if they could post videos on social media. “The first day, it was like a party,” he adds.

within many industries has enabled a pattern recognition that is expediting the company’s work, as Omidshafiei notes: “We realized there’s quite a large amount of overlapping needs across the customer base, and we are now able to deploy the same model in different verticals.” While there is still work to do, effectively focusing on the challenge of robotic navigation and perception (over manipulation) to start, FieldAI is now quite literally putting its robots in position to begin those other challenges. As Omidshafiei puts it, “We first needed safe navigation in order to do the kind of manipulation that is useful for our customers.” For Agha, all of this work is building toward something bigger in the near future: “Our goal is to build a general-purpose robotic brain that matures over time. We’re pushing toward a future where that brain reaches a level of maturity that can fundamentally transform society for the better.”

By day two, the excitement faded—and it was just another day on the job, the ultimate stamp of approval. The robots had simply become part of the crew. To smooth the transition, FieldAI added playful touches: a pair of googly eyes here, a naming contest there. One quadruped dog was rechristened “Nugget” by workers via survey, and suddenly it wasn’t just a machine—it was Nugget. “Where’s Nugget now?” they’d ask throughout the day. (Answer: Santa Clara.) FieldAI’s robots are currently deployed in a range of sectors and geographies, from Japan to Europe to the United States. The benefit of working

C A L I

F O R E V E R

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This is a place to build.

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California has been the place to make things that matter for nearly two centuries. In recent years it has slipped into paradox, as both a lighthouse of ingenuity and the epicenter of red-taped dysfunction. California Forever aims to tip the scales back and make the Golden State the beacon of building once again.

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The Golden Gate Bridge took just four years to complete (1933–1937) and was the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time.

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The construction of the Sepulveda Tunnel in the 1930s created a new thoroughfare, connecting the San Fernando Valley with West Los Angeles, and drove extraordinary growth.

California started with a boom 175 years ago. The Gold Rush, the Transcontinental Railroad completion, and the Port of San Francisco expansion—all within a 20-year period between 1850 and 1870—set the stage for the Golden State as the de facto place to build anything, and everything, of consequence. While a staggering number of game-changing industries were born in California, their impact continues to reverberate globally to this day.

1910s WWI DEFENSE: SHIPYARDS, AEROSPACE & MANUFACTURING During World War I, California’s shipyards—especially Mare Island and Long Beach—became epicenters of U.S. naval production, creating tens of thousands of skilled jobs for welders, engineers, and dock workers, rapidly industrializing the Bay Area and Southern California coasts. California’s wartime production surged during WWII as it became a magnet for skilled labor, with over 2 million new jobs created across aerospace, manufacturing, and logistics. This industrial scale-up spurred major infrastructure investments, including new highways, port expansions, and largescale factory complexes.

1920s HOLLYWOOD The rise of Hollywood in the 1910s transformed Los Angeles into a film production juggernaut, with over 80% of the world’s movies made in California by the 1920s. This created thousands of jobs for actors, cinematographers, set builders, and technicians underpinned by technical innovation, including the development of synchronized sound (“talking pictures”) and advanced studio lighting systems. Over 100 years later, California’s Hollywood film renaissance is now spread across the globe.

1960s THE SPACE RACE In the 1960s, California helped propel the United States to victory in the space race. Southern California’s aerospace industry built the Apollo Command and Service Modules, and mighty F-1 engines—manufactured in Canoga Park—powered the Saturn V rocket to the moon. Additionally, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena pushed the boundaries of unmanned space exploration. The Golden State’s top universities fed the effort with research and talent, resulting in billions in economic output alongside cutting-edge infrastructure, from clean rooms to advanced computing facilities.

1970s SEMICONDUCTORS—SILICON VALLEY The semiconductor revolution began when Fairchild Semiconductor and, later, Intel developed the integrated circuit and microprocessor, launching a new global industry. These ignited explosive job growth in engineering, software, and electronics manufacturing, making Santa Clara County the highest-paying metro region in the U.S. Infrastructure investment followed, including tech parks, research universities, and transit expansions. Silicon Valley’s semiconductors, and the ensuing personalcomputing revolution, established California as the epicenter of 20th-century technological progress.

1980s THE BIRTH OF BIOTECHNOLOGY The biotech revolution in California began in earnest with Genentech’s 1982 release of the first genetically engineered drug—synthetic insulin—followed by Amgen’s blockbuster anemia treatment, Epogen, in 1989. These breakthroughs launched an entirely new industry that combined cutting-edge science with pharmaceutical manufacturing. By 2020, California’s life sciences sector supported over 1.37 million jobs underpinned by worldclass labs, clean-room manufacturing plants, and a robust academic pipeline that positioned California as a global leader in medical innovation and infrastructure.

1990s THE INTERNET & TECH BOOM The late 1990s saw the explosive rise of internet infrastructure companies like Cisco, Netscape, and Yahoo!, transforming Silicon Valley into the digital backbone of the global economy. This first wave of dot-com growth gave way to a deeper tech renaissance in the 2000s and 2010s, fueled by such giants as Apple, Google, Facebook, and scores of entrepreneurs, driving unprecedented demand for engineers, designers, data scientists, and venture capital. By 2021, California’s tech industry employed over 1.88 million people and accounted for $520 billion in economic output—nearly 20% of the state’s GDP.

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1958

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The Army Corps of Engineers imagined where California would grow.

These very industries, from semiconductors to biotechnology, and the values that underpin them— possibility for all, ambition to build, and a burning desire to make a dent—drew Jan Sramek, Founder and CEO of California Forever, to the Golden State: “I grew up in post-Soviet Eastern Europe in the ’90s. Hollywood was very successful in promoting California as this deeply optimistic place that could do anything.” That is precisely the jujitsu move the California Forever team is aiming to pull off: build a city from scratch under the very rules that created the problem in the first place. Will it work?

“I literally wrote down all the reasons for why it would fail,” Sramek says. “There’s not enough water. Transportation. Politics. There’s some weird soil that you can’t actually build on. And so on…I think there were 75 reasons. And I systematically went through them—some of them were obviously not a problem, and some of them took work, but I couldn’t find the fatal flaw.” The final step in pursuing the idea was to understand if it had been previously explored or imagined. And it turns out, the Army Corps of Engineers had.

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“And there’s a city, right here, where we’re standing now.” —Jan Sramek, Founder and CEO

“In 2014, one of the books that I read referenced a long-range study of the Bay Area dating back to 1958. So I googled it and found the study. You couldn’t get digital copies, but you could get physical copies on eBay, and I ordered it,” says Sramek. “I remember, like it was yesterday, when it arrived. I’m opening these maps, decade by decade, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s…and it was clear they got many things

right, like they predicted Pleasanton and Dublin. I turned over the 2010 page, and it looks like the beginning of something, and then I turned over the 2020 page, and there’s a city, right here, where we’re standing now.” That map now hangs in California Forever’s headquarters, a symbol of what the team is hard charging toward: the California Dream. 34

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According to Sramek, for centuries humanity leaned on tradition and wisdom to build cities effectively, from public spaces and private residences to waterways and sanitation systems. Then the automobile arrived, two world wars, and an obscure 1926 Supreme Court case, Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty. In 1916, Berkeley, CA, became the first city in the United States to enact comprehensive zoning laws, ostensibly to separate industrial uses from residential ones. But beneath the surface, the intent was clear: to prevent minorities from moving into white neighborhoods. This inspired Euclid, OH, to pass a similar code, which subsequently made its

way to the Supreme Court, where zoning was affirmed and became the law of the land. What started as a regulatory experiment in Berkeley became the legal backbone for America’s suburban sprawl. Zoning was anointed the tool by which apartments were outlawed, density was throttled, and it became easier—especially in California—to build a three-car garage than a triplex. Sramek continues: “If you wanted to design a system to completely break the social fabric of society, you would create the California housing system. It’s a place where everyone wants to live; you fix the housing stock; and then everyone is fighting with everyone, whether it’s renters or buyers.” 36

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The tragic yet logical conclusion to a century of exclusion is an irrational system that exposes a big hole, a “Missing Middle,” in places for Californians to live. The benefits of medium-density housing— such as duplexes, fourplexes, and courtyard apartments—are clear. It’s easy to see across many American cities of the past (from Charleston, SC, to Brooklyn, NY), Japan (Tokyo and Kyoto suburbs), Denmark (Copenhagen’s Courtyard Housing), and a number of European communities. By fitting more homes into walkable neighborhoods without overwhelming infrastructure, it supports local businesses with consistent foot traffic, makes housing more affordable by lowering

per-unit land costs, and enables greater access to public transit. This compact, human-scale development curbs sprawl, preserving green spaces and reducing car dependency, while also promoting social and economic diversity by accommodating a broader mix of residents. Sramek, who grew up in a home that his grandmother built with her bare hands in the Czech Republic (“My grandma is hardcore,” he proudly asserts), has dedicated his life to altering the trajectory of the Golden State once again, making homeownership affordable and accessible, and restoring California’s legacy as a place that builds.

These residents are helping build Solano County’s future—construction workers, small-business owners, ranchers, farmers, and more.

Brenda Gonzalez, restaurant entrepreneur in Dixon

Members of the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union in Vacaville

Pete Craig, rancher in Solano County

Michael Brito, Director of Administration of Rubicon, Chair of The Salvation Army Kroc Center in Suisun City

Rob Nickelson, farmer in Solano County

Katie Estupinan, member of the Nor Cal Carpenters Union in Fairfield

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Core to the project will be its job-creating hubs: the Solano Foundry, an advanced manufacturing park, and the Solano Shipyard. The shipyard alone could create tens of thousands of jobs, reviving skilled trades in construction,

welding, logistics, and advanced manufacturing. The timing makes sense given national security and supply chain concerns: compared to China (~1,400), South Korea (~700–800), and Japan (~500–600), the U.S. builds five ships per year. Just five.

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Situated midway between the only two major U.S. Navy shipyards on the continental West Coast— in Bremerton, WA, and San Diego, CA—the shipyard would address a geographic and operational gap in America’s maritime infrastructure. There is nowhere

better to build a shipyard of the future than an hour north of Silicon Valley. Infrastructure improvements, including upgrades to Highway 12 and the restoration of rail lines, would support the shipyard and stimulate broader regional development.

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Solano County has long designated over 10 square miles for maritime industry on this coast, making it potentially the largest shipbuilding facility in America.

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“Cities are still the place where people with different values can come together and build something special.” —Jan Sramek

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As America reindustrializes, the Solano Foundry is envisioned as an ecosystem that could restore California’s heritage as the place where cutting‑edge technology is not only designed but built. The advanced manufacturing park would be home to industries like advanced transportation, robotics, and energy, and is projected to create approximately 40,000 jobs. Global real-estate leader JLL has identified Solano County as a prime location for an American manufacturing revival, with JLL’s new Advanced Manufacturing Group concluding that “the evidence suggests that the California Forever project is the state’s strongest opportunity to revitalize its manufacturing sector and bring manufacturing jobs back to California.”

The scope and scale of California Forever is staggering. Sited on a contiguous plot of land roughly double the size of San Francisco (100-plus square miles), the project aims to build the next great American city. Three essential pillars—a beautiful, walkable city with homes people can afford, the Solano Shipyard, and the Solano Foundry to provide abundant employment—will create the necessary preconditions for California to rediscover its heritage as a driver of American innovation. That is not only a California Dream, but an American one.

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An Interview With Reed Jobs & Dan McHugh by Evan Smith

Q: What is Yosemite’s mission?

The science to end cancer as we know it is accelerating, yet the funding models to drive it forward aren’t keeping up. Reed Jobs and Dan McHugh think they have an answer: a hybrid of venture capital and philanthropy designed to push high-risk, high-reward research over the valley of death and into the clinic. In this interview with Evan Smith, they explain why the economics of biotech need a rethink—and how Yosemite, the firm they co-founded and run, plans to make cancer nonlethal by scaling the breakthroughs that matter most. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Reed Jobs: To make cancer nonlethal in our lifetimes. We believe the companies that will make it possible haven’t been created yet, and we want to have the biggest role in creating them. Q: How did Yosemite’s work grow out of your time at Emerson Collective? Jobs: It’s 100% informed by our work at Emerson Collective. We saw the scalability of our investment strategy in both philanthropy and in venture, and around that same time, we realized that cancer research itself was undergoing a huge renaissance. 48

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Q: Is there a point at which you put yourself out of business, where you’ve actually made cancer nonlethal? — Evan Smith

A: I’ll tell you when we get there. — Reed Jobs

From pond scum to potential cures, algae are surprising scientists with compounds that can help slow cancer growth. When paired with cutting-edge gene-editing tools like CRISPR, these green powerhouses could transform how we fight cancer in the near future.

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Dan McHugh: Starting companies out of academia wasn’t new to biotech venture capital, and neither was giving translational grants new to philanthropy. But seamlessly combining them under one strategy is uniquely synergistic and became core to how we operate.

Q: Why hasn’t the “make cancer nonlethal” goal been achieved before? Jobs: Cancer has been thought about and worked on for millennia, but real progress has only happened in the last 50 years—since the structure of DNA was discovered, the human genome was sequenced, and biotechnology matured. Mortality from some cancers has dropped dramatically. The challenge is that cancer isn’t one disease; it’s over 200, each with different causes. Today we have a mature understanding and therapies targeting the root causes, but it’s still the most complex problem in medicine.

Q: What did you learn at Emerson that shaped Yosemite? Jobs: The biggest lesson was that late-stage philanthropy in biotech is essentially identical to early-seed funding in venture capital. Philanthropists can take on risk in ways investors often can’t, which lets them identify and own early science before it’s proven out.

Q: Your first fund drew a diverse set of investors. How did you bring them together?

Q: How do you balance philanthropy with commercial rigor in your investments?

Jobs: Cancer is a global disease that affects everyone. We didn’t want an exclusively American LP base, so we built global alignment around funding the best science wherever it originates. We are a proudly American company.

Jobs: Processes are separate, but the team is shared. We never give grants to companies—only to academic labs and nonprofits—and take no IP or royalty rights. On the investment side, we only back companies that we believe could theoretically return our fund.

Q: Why do you think some investors were drawn to such a specialized, first-time fund?

McHugh: Even with grants, we focus on work that can ultimately attract enough capital to become a product for patients. The goal is always to move science toward impact, and we believe those economic and impact incentives are well aligned.

Jobs: Some were turned off—it’s new, and not everyone wants to take that risk. But others immediately saw the value in combining philanthropy and venture, and wanted to back both the team and the method. It’s like Jerry Garcia’s line about licorice—not everyone likes it, but the ones who do really do.

Q: How do you define impact? Jobs: First, fulfilling our fiduciary duty to investors. But our ultimate metric is making cancer less lethal. That means developing drugs that help people and can be delivered at a low cost. Academic papers are great, but real impact comes from getting treatments to patients at scale.

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Q: Within oncology, what excites you most right now?

Q: What keeps you up at night? Jobs: Missing something great. Paradigm-shifting academic breakthroughs often shatter conventional wisdom and come as a surprise—like AlphaFold or the first immunotherapy results. The fear is being blindsided by something transformative we’re not part of.

Jobs: Long-term, we’re excited about solid tumortargeting immunotherapy. Short- to medium-term, we’re most excited about leading in epigenetic gene editing—something we believe we can be world leaders in. Q: What is epigenetic gene editing, and why is it so promising?

McHugh: The lack of sufficient support for true innovation, especially as pharma pulls back from early R&D and government funding faces cuts. There’s a capital gap at a time when the potential for impact is enormous. Yosemite can help fill it, but we can’t be the world’s entire research engine.

McHugh: Most human diseases aren’t caused by a single mutation but by misregulated gene expression. Epigenetic editing can up- or down-regulate multiple genes in a durable or reversible way. Its applications range from large-population diseases like hepatitis B—which affects over 250 million people and drives liver cancer—to complex conditions like Parkinson’s. We believe our work with Tune Therapeutics is an early proof point for the model.

Q: How much is the government funding retrenchment on your mind? Jobs: Look, public opinion is strongly on the side of cancer research—over 90% approval in the U.S. I don’t think many politicians will go against that. If you’re on the side of cancer, you’re on the losing side. I feel good about the side we’re on.

Q: Will Yosemite ever expand beyond cancer? Jobs: My motivation is personal, and it extends to all cancers. We built Yosemite for this specific mission, and that focus isn’t going away. Q: How is AI affecting your work? Jobs: We’re cautious about hype cycles, but AI is already transforming the cost structure of areas like clinical trial segmentation and drug discovery. It’s not surpassing humans yet, but it’s matching them and dramatically improving efficiency. The business models are still evolving, but the technology is real.

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These Companies Are Pushing the Science to Change How We Fight Cancer Moonlight Bio In the last 20 years, T-cell therapies—patientderived immune cells modified outside the body—have transformed cancer treatment, curing some blood cancers in over half of patients. But they still don’t work against solid tumors, which cause most cancer deaths. Moonlight Bio is developing a new generation of T-cell therapies to change that, starting with a bold idea: take genetic changes that cause T-cell diseases and use them to make T-cell therapies stronger—essentially flipping harmful mutations into helpful ones to supercharge the immune system. The result is a pipeline of “supernatural” T-cell therapies engineered to overcome barriers that have long limited success in solid tumors.

Arsenal Biosciences Most cancer deaths are caused by solid tumors, which current T-cell therapies struggle to treat effectively and safely. Arsenal Bio is tackling this problem by reprogramming a patient’s own T cells using synthetic biology, aiming to create smarter, stronger, and safer cancer-fighting cells. Its approach combines biology, automation, and computation to design T cells with multiple builtin functions—helping them grow faster, target tumors more precisely, avoid harming healthy tissue, and overcome the defenses tumors use to hide. The ultimate goal is to build programmable immune cells that can outsmart even the toughest tumors, and the company is well on its way with multiple preclinical and clinical candidates.

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Atropos Health Only about 14% of medical decisions are backed by evidence—health-care data is plentiful, but the data-to-evidence pipeline is broken and lacks transparency, accuracy, and quality. Atropos Health is closing the evidence gap by turning health-care data into high-quality, real-world evidence (RWE) fast. Its suite of tools allows clinicians and researchers to generate publication-grade observational research studies in hours, not months. Atropos Health generates RWE from realworld data (RWD) in the Atropos Evidence™ Network, the largest federated health-care data network, and from a customer’s own data. It helps life-science and health-system organizations make smarter, data-driven decisions about clinical trial design and drug development and care pathways. Simply put: Atropos Health progresses precision medicine by turning RWD into RWE from bench to bedside for better patient outcomes.

Daymark Health Of the 2 million people diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. every year, nearly all spend over 8,500 hours outside of their oncology clinic—left to manage symptoms, logistics, and emotional support alone. Daymark Health bridges that gap by partnering with health plans and oncologists to provide in-home and virtual care. Its team helps patients manage symptoms, navigate their care journey, and access mental-health care and social resources like transportation—and provides compassionate and coordinated support. Like its namesake “daymarks,” which sailors use to navigate at sea, the company aims to be a beacon of guidance, support, and assurance.

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Innovative Genomics Institute

“ We really think about how genome editing will impact human health in the future and curing genetic diseases.”

When Dr. Jennifer A. Doudna co-discovered CRISPR in 2012, she handed humanity the editing tools for its own genetic script. Precise, powerful, and remarkably accessible, CRISPR offered the kind of control over DNA that once seemed like science fiction. But Doudna knew discovery alone wasn’t enough. In 2014, she founded the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), not just as a research hub but as a launchpad for using gene editing to solve realworld problems, from deadly diseases to droughtstricken crops. In medicine, IGI is building a future where inherited disorders like sickle cell disease could be corrected at the genetic level. In agriculture, its scientists are redesigning staple crops to thrive in a warming world—think rice that guzzles less water and livestock that burp less methane. The goal isn’t just to tweak biology but to rebalance its relationship with people and the planet. “We really think about how genome editing will impact human health in the future and curing genetic diseases, and also how it will impact our planet as we grapple with climate change,” Doudna has said. That dual mission—healing both bodies and ecosystems—is what makes IGI uniquely ambitious. Based at UC Berkeley, with research labs at UCSF and UC Davis, IGI has also become a leading voice in the ethics of gene editing, ensuring this radical new power is wielded with care, equity, and transparency. CRISPR may have started in a lab, but IGI is taking it into the fields, the clinics, and the future. And under Doudna’s guidance, the question isn’t whether gene editing will change the world—but how thoughtfully we choose to do it.

— Dr. Jennifer A. Doudna, Founder

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Using CRISPR, scientists at the Innovative Genomics Institute are exploring ways to give crops a natural “sunscreen” to handle excess sunlight. The goal: stronger plants that produce more food with fewer resources while helping mitigate climate change.

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Teal Health

“ This isn’t just a new product—it’s a new way to put health care back into women’s hands.”

For decades, cervical cancer has been a story of progress with an asterisk. Thanks to cervical cancer screenings like Pap smears and HPV testing, death rates have plummeted—but only for those who make it to a clinic. Millions of women in the U.S. still miss screenings every year, not out of neglect but because of discomfort, inconvenience, or lack of access. Teal Health is rewriting that story. The Teal Wand™, recently greenlit by the FDA, is the first at-home cervical cancer screening device of its kind. No speculum. No stirrups. No scheduling gymnastics. Just a self-swab that takes minutes and can be done in the privacy of one’s own home. The sample is mailed to a certified lab, where it is tested for HPV—the virus that causes nearly all cervical cancers. The science checks out. In clinical trials, the Teal Wand detected cervical precancer with 96% accuracy, matching traditional methods. But the human side is just as powerful: 94% of women preferred screening with the Teal Wand to the speculum exam experience. Kara Egan, Teal’s Co-Founder and CEO, in her own words: “As a mom and a woman, I get how easy it is to put your own health last,” she says. “This isn’t just a new product—it’s a new way to put health care back into women’s hands.” Teal rolled out for the first time in California in the summer of 2025, with national expansion on the horizon. If it succeeds, this tiny wand could do something extraordinary: close the gap between progress and access—and make cervical cancer one less thing women have to worry about.

— Kara Egan, Co-Founder and CEO

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From prototype to trial, the Teal Wand has been proven to be as accurate as the clinician.

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Tune Therapeutics

In the symphony of genetic medicine, Tune Therapeutics is composing a revolutionary new movement—one that doesn’t rewrite DNA but reorchestrates its expression. While traditional gene editing acts like a scalpel, cutting and replacing faulty genes, Tune’s approach is more akin to a sound engineer fine-tuning a mix. Its proprietary TEMPO platform uses epigenetic editing to modulate gene activity without altering the underlying DNA sequence. This method offers a reversible and nuanced control over gene expression, potentially reducing risks associated with permanent genetic changes. Leading the charge is Tune-401, an experimental therapy targeting chronic hepatitis B—a condition affecting over 250 million people worldwide and a leading cause of liver cancer. Unlike existing treatments that merely suppress the virus, Tune-401

aims to epigenetically silence the viral DNA, offering the possibility of a functional cure. Early trials in New Zealand and Hong Kong have shown promising results, with the therapy effectively repressing the virus in human liver cells and infected mouse models. A key figure in Tune’s journey is Co-Founder, board member, and Yosemite Managing Director Dan McHugh. With a background in bioengineering and management science from Stanford, McHugh has been instrumental in steering the company’s vision and securing critical funding. His leadership has helped position Tune at the forefront of epigenetic therapy development. As Tune Therapeutics continues to refine its gene-tuning technologies, the company stands poised to transform the treatment landscape for chronic diseases, offering hope for therapies that are both precise and adaptable. 62

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“Genes are like musical notes on a music score…

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…and gene expression is like the volume that can be turned up or down.

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Gene tuning is like the dial that is used to adjust the sound.” —Heidi Zhang, Chief Development Officer

ANTORA BIG CARBON BLOCKS ARE BRINGING THE HEAT WHEN INDUSTRIAL MANUFACTURERS NEED IT THE MOST

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THE HIDDEN ENGINE OF MODERN LIFE 68

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Every steel beam, glass bottle, or bag of cement starts with something few people think about: heat. Enormous quantities of it. Industrial heat powers the backbone of modern life—steel plants, glass furnaces, chemical reactors, cement kilns—pumping out materials that make up our cities, vehicles, and infrastructure. These processes typically run nonstop, requiring heat at hundreds or thousands of degrees.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, coal-fired furnaces and gas-fired boilers have kept the gears of industry turning. Even as the world added electricity and automation, the bedrock remained fire. But for the first time in history, there’s another way to make this heat cheaply and reliably.

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Why Timing and Energy Markets Matter Creating industrial heat with electricity is typically more expensive than burning fuels at the factory. But electricity isn’t priced the same throughout the day: in electricity markets, prices swing based on supply and demand. When there’s a surplus of energy production or a lull in demand, prices drop toward zero. If manufacturers could soak up that ultra-cheap power when no one else wants it, they’d unlock a new source of clean, low-cost energy. The hard part is turning this intermittent power into always-on heat. Traditional battery technology excels at shifting energy for a few hours, not at meeting industry’s round-the-clock needs. To tap into this cheap power, we need a completely new approach to energy storage.

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Enter Antora: Turning Cheap Electricity Into Always-On Industrial Energy In 2018, Andrew Ponec, David Bierman, and Justin Briggs saw this wall and decided to break through it. Ponec had already built and sold his first energy company to SunPower. Bierman and Briggs had recently completed their PhDs at MIT and Stanford, respectively. The three spent months modeling nearly every possible method of storing energy to meet industrial demand. They investigated advanced materials and complex approaches, but kept circling back to a simple idea: storing energy as heat in cheap, abundant materials. “There’s not some crazy, magic technology going on here,” Ponec, Co-Founder and CEO of the company, told The Wall Street Journal in February 2024. “It’s something that’s very intuitive.” And so they built Antora, a startup focused not on fancy chemistry, but on the fundamental physics of heat. Antora’s breakthrough is stunning in its simplicity. Imagine giant black blocks made of solid carbon, like the graphite in a pencil. When electricity is cheap and abundant, Antora uses it to

heat up these blocks until they’re glowing white-hot inside an insulated, shipping container–size module. Why carbon? It’s inexpensive and abundant, remains stable at extreme temperatures, and stores four times as much energy as electrochemical batteries within the same volume. Typically produced with coal and petroleum byproducts, the blocks have a large existing domestic supply chain in an industry that America already excels at. In the coming years, Antora has the potential to create major new markets for American-made carbon products. The blocks reach temperatures above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius), hotter than a blast furnace. The system stores this heat for days on end and steadily releases it to drive alwayson industry, delivering steam to the factory or directly integrating into an industrial process. Antora has also developed a breakthrough heat-to-power technology, thermophotovoltaics, that can convert this stored heat into electricity with no moving parts. Factory-built in the United States, Antora’s modular thermal batteries are road-shipped to industrial sites and arranged in arrays of dozens or hundreds to serve industrial energy loads of any size.

Christel Camat Production Lead Technician

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The Not-So-Secret Formula: Carbon Blocks

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“There’s not some crazy, magic technology going on here. It’s something that’s very intuitive.” —Andrew Ponec, Co-Founder and CEO

Ponec isn’t your typical energy CEO. He built his first company in college, sold it in his early 20s, and started Antora at the Activate Fellowship in Berkeley alongside co-founders Bierman and Briggs. He recruited a team of Stanford and MIT scientists; brought on a leadership team with experience from SpaceX to the White House; and raised capital from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Shell Ventures, and most recently BlackRock’s Decarbonization Partners.

As of 2025, Antora had secured over $250 million in funding to scale manufacturing and deploy its technology at commercial scale. It’s not just vision. The team has executed. They’ve already proven their product in the field, hitting every operational milestone at their first commercial-scale site near Fresno, CA. And they’ve stood up a thermal battery gigafactory in San Jose, CA.

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After proving the concept in California, Antora has set its sights on a much larger target: the massive industrial facilities that dot the American Midwest. The company’s most ambitious project is already underway with a major industrial facility. The goal? Build a cluster of Antora thermal battery modules that together will form a massive battery—not in terms of lithium or electrons, but in sheer energy stored as heat. Antora’s modules will absorb low-cost energy from the Plains and deliver reliable heat to the industrial plant.

Antora’s beachhead market is biofuels. Why? Because the market is huge—and motivated. In 2018, ethanol plants alone spent $2.7 billion on fuels to power their operations, despite being located next to some of the cheapest electricity in the country. It’s a massive market, with 187 ethanol facilities in the United States. And it sets up Antora to expand into chemicals, cement, and even oil refining. All told, the global market for industrial energy tops a trillion dollars every year.

FROM CALIFORNIA 78

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TO THE MIDWEST 79

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REWRITING THE ENERGY EQUATION WITH HOT ROCKS

The idea is simple, but the implications are enormous. By turning cheap electricity into always-on heat, Antora is adding a new, low-cost energy source for American manufacturers, reducing operating costs and making U.S. industrial products more competitive. And the company is doing it with a technology that’s made in America, creating manufacturing jobs at Antora’s factory and at its customers’ facilities.

Meanwhile, new demand for carbon—not to burn, but to heat up—could breathe new life into coal communities and strengthen domestic energy supply chains. Put it all together, and Antora has the potential to spark a renaissance across the American industrial sector. Not with novel materials or exotic fusion reactors—but with hot rocks.

A MPLIF Y :

H OW O NE C OMPA NY RE WROTE

THE EDTEC H PL AYBO O K

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It began with a whiteboard and a big idea in New York.

In 2000, long before edtech was a buzzword, digital assessments were commonplace, or the phrase “Science of Reading” appeared in legislative memos, Larry Berger and Greg Gunn founded a company called Wireless Generation. They weren’t setting out to disrupt education. They were trying to help teachers do their jobs better. Berger and Gunn, both Rhodes Scholars, were frustrated by how little real-time data teachers had access to, and how much time they spent on paperwork with iffy impact. So the company’s first product was squarely aimed at fixing that: software that could help teachers collect and analyze student literacy data on handheld devices—PalmPilots, to be exact. “What does it mean to make teachers feel like you are saving them time and making them better?”

Berger recalls. “We just went in search of places where that was at stake.” And it worked. Its software digitized what were once informal reading inventories—clunky paper assessments that teachers administered with stopwatches and calculators—and turned them into a seamless experience. Suddenly, teachers were not only saving time, but also getting access to diagnostic data that was useful, actionable, and required by the new federal Reading First initiative. The product, now known as mCLASS, caught on. This emergent playbook—following the bread crumbs of teacher frustration including tedious tasks, disjointed tools, and well-meaning mandates bogged down by poor implementation—turned into a durable, decades-long strategy.

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The “So What, Now What?” Problem Streamlining workflow was only step one. More data doesn’t mean better decisions, and more dashboards don’t mean deeper learning. The real challenge was helping teachers interpret the deluge of student information and figure out what to do next. “We worked for many years on what we called the ‘so what’ problem and the ‘now what’ problem,” Berger says. “We had all this student data, but what was actually worth telling teachers? And what could they do about it?” This wasn’t about analytics for analytics’ sake. It was detective work, workflow engineering, and teacher-centered product design all rolled into one. Amplify’s mission became not just providing data but making sure the right insight hit the right teacher at the right time.

News Corp was not prepared for five-year product development cycles and three-year state adoptions. By 2015, the experiment had run its course. Amplify was losing money, and News Corp wanted out. That’s when Berger—along with a group of investors led by Emerson Collective—took control. In a matter of weeks, they bought the company back and began rebuilding. It was a crucible moment. Most companies don’t survive that kind of corporate whiplash, but Amplify did—and came out the other side clearer, scrappier, and more teacher-obsessed than ever. Rebuilding With the Right Kind of Capital Emerson Collective played a quiet but critical role in Amplify’s second act. While most investors flinched at the idea of rebuilding an edtech company offloaded by a media empire, Emerson leaned in. “They didn’t say, ‘Oof, this doesn’t fit our investing model.’ They said, ‘If that’s what this takes, let’s do it,’” Berger says. This wasn’t simply capital—it was alignment. Emerson shared Amplify’s belief that developing, deploying, and scaling impactful products in education takes time. More specifically, both asserted that transformational work wouldn’t come from a single app but from full-stack solutions—curriculum, assessment, professional learning—that fit together and evolve with classroom needs. Instead of racing back to market, Amplify decided to focus squarely on instruction and how to succeed in the ossified curriculum market dominated by the big three textbook publishers.

A Near-Death Experience By 2010, Wireless Generation had grown into a respected player in K–3 assessment. And shortly after NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein came in as CEO, News Corp swooped in and acquired the company for $360 million, rebranding it as Amplify. What followed was equal parts dream and challenge. Flush with corporate capital, Amplify tried to reinvent the classroom. It launched a custom Android tablet, built out a national sales force, and bet on being a digital-first, print-free publishing company. It didn’t work. “News Corp placed a big, ambitious bet,” Berger says. “But what they weren’t quite willing to do was spend the time.” Despite its best intentions, 87

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We love your stuff, but… we still want books. Going in Early on the Science of Reading Before the Sold a Story podcast went viral, before state legislatures began issuing mandates, and before most publishers had taken notice, Amplify was moving on the Science of Reading. It was up on the research and listening to teachers. The company licensed and expanded the Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) curriculum—a phonics-rich, knowledge-building program developed with the Core Knowledge Foundation— and doubled down on mCLASS. For years, CKLA was seen as a niche program for the Science of Reading crowd. But then teachers started asking, “Why aren’t my students learning to read?”—and found Amplify waiting with a credible answer (CKLA alone generated over $375 million last year).

flexibility and fidelity in one package. Districts that once gave Amplify a polite second place started giving it the win. When Students Groan = A Great Sign Having proved itself in literacy, Amplify set its sights on the next frontier: science. With a new K–8 curriculum that emphasized students learning to think like scientists, it achieved a 33% market share in grades K–5 and 42% in grades 6–8 in California’s famously competitive adoption process. Amplify earned the only “all-green” rating from EdReports, the education field’s answer to Consumer Reports. The next move? Math. In 2022, Amplify acquired Desmos Classroom, a digital-first math platform (and middle school curriculum) that makes student thinking visible and classrooms buzz with active learning. The merger gave Amplify not only an extraordinary product, but an audience of passionate educators and a cultural edge. Today the result is Amplify Desmos Math—a comprehensive K–12 curriculum that is poised to take the market by storm and redefine what math teaching and learning can look like. How do you know when a product works? When kids groan—not because they’re bored, but because the teacher stops the activity.

Print Isn’t Dead—It’s Hybrid At the same time, Amplify made a contrarian move in edtech: it started printing materials. The company began hearing the same thing from teachers: “We love your stuff, but…we still want books.” The conventional wisdom in edtech was that print was dead, but the conventional wisdom didn’t sit in classrooms every day. Instead of treating print as a legacy format to be phased out, Amplify treated it as a coequal medium. The result: fully integrated hybrid curricula giving teachers 88

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The Butterfly, the Teacher, and the Future

One of Berger’s favorite metaphors for great classroom moments is the butterfly. “If a butterfly floats in the classroom window, everyone stops to watch it. There’s a moment of collective attention on something surprising and beautiful. No one looks away. No one asks if this is on the test. Everyone remembers it. That’s the experience we’re trying to create,” he says. “If you then say, ‘OK, kids, take out your tablets and watch butterfly videos,’ the magic dies.” “Keeping the butterfly alive” has become Amplify’s shorthand for the delicate art of building products that support, but don’t suffocate, great teaching. That don’t trap students in passive

consumption. That make the teacher and their lively students the heroes of the room—not the software. That principle guides how Amplify approaches everything, especially AI. While many in the sector race to bolt on chatbots and generate synthetic lesson plans, Amplify is asking different questions. What do teachers actually want? Where can AI meaningfully save time, extend reach, and deepen insight? How do we build tools that keep the butterfly in flight? Berger is cautiously optimistic: “We’re excited. We think AI could be the best set of butterfly pollinators in a long time.”

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25 Years In: The Long Game In 2023, Amplify secured a significant Series C investment led by Cox Enterprises to further expand its product offerings and reach. The company now serves more than 15 million students across all 50 states. In a sector often dominated by hype cycles and flashy demos, Amplify’s staying power over 25 years is a healthy dose of old-fashioned business building, listening more than pitching, and creating tools that do the unglamorous but essential work of helping teachers help kids. While it now stands on the edge of its next chapter, with AI on the horizon and a generational opportunity to shape the next 25 years of American education, Berger is sticking with the playbook: listen to teachers, build what they need, and iterate until it works. “Education requires a lot of patience, and the products that become great in education rarely do so because someone builds something in a garage, puts it out there, and it becomes huge overnight,” says Berger. “The thing that tends to happen is you invent something, you try it in schools, and you realize you didn’t quite get it right. Teachers teach you how to make it better, and over a few years you get to something that’s pretty good. And over a few more years you get something that’s a real breakthrough. I love that journey. I wouldn’t want it to be any other way.” 92

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Innovation moves fast. But it rarely starts where the need is greatest.

Nonprofit Jam

Bentonville, AR

One Day. T One Thousa

Brooklyn, NY

Chicago, IL Columbus, OH

Dallas, TX

Denver, CO

Los Angeles, CA

Ten Cities. and Builders. Oakland, CA

Salinas, CA

Wilmington, DE

For decades, America’s social sector has operated in a tech time warp. While startups sprint through accelerators and corporations build billion-dollar innovation labs, community organizations often find themselves having to do much more with much less. These are the very groups first to respond when housing crises emerge, food insecurity spikes, immigration backlogs increase, and educational gaps widen. Nonprofits, many of which are long on transformation and problem solving, can be stuck using yesterday’s tools to solve tomorrow’s problems. Innovation moves fast. But it rarely starts where the need is greatest. On July 17, 2025, OpenAI redrew the starting line. More than 1,000 nonprofit leaders gathered simultaneously across 10 cities for a first-of-its-kind event: a national gathering of nonprofits to build using AI, designed and hosted by OpenAI. It was a coordinated effort to put cuttingedge AI tools directly into the hands of those working closest to society’s most urgent challenges, couple them with OpenAI tech leaders, and make things happen. This wasn’t a conference. It was a jam session. Not to talk about AI, but to build with it. And that’s what happened.

78%

said they left the Jam with a functional workflow

95% said they were likely to apply AI in their organization

Innovation moves fast. But it rarely starts where the need is greatest.

Nonprofit Jam

UndauntedK12: Oakland, CA UndauntedK12 helps public school systems modernize their aging infrastructure, translating complex federal guidance into clear, actionable steps for district leaders. Its mission sits at the intersection of policy and operations, where plans, compliance deadlines, and funding shape whether students learn in safe, healthy environments. Facilities teams comb through federal guidance and regulations across agencies, attempting to interpret shifting policies. Add to that weather disruptions, floods, fires, snow days, and more, and the job becomes urgent and overwhelming. At the Jam, UndauntedK12 built two prototypes in a single day. The first: a Google News scraper designed to track and organize weather-related school closures nationwide. Today, UndauntedK12 already maintains the best dataset on school disruptions, which affected more than 9 million students last year. Instead of relying on scattered headlines and manual collection, AI could create a real-time signal system. The second was the early sketch of a custom GPT help desk trained to answer questions in plain language and surface the guidance most relevant to school facilities staff. Before a decades-old HVAC system fails, UndauntedK12’s tools can help school leaders make a plan to switch to cleaner, more efficient alternatives and harness federal policy tools to defray the cost. And when policymakers are looking to quantify the impact of extreme weather on students in their state, UndauntedK12’s data provides the clarity and evidence to motivate action.

Digital NEST: Salinas, CA Just miles from Silicon Valley, youth from California’s agricultural communities face soaring housing costs, high poverty rates, limited job opportunities in low-wage sectors, and a wide digital divide. Talent is everywhere, but opportunities are few, limiting their financial stability and perpetuating the cycle of economic inequality. Digital NEST is a network of workforce development centers that provide youth in these communities with access to the resources, skills, and network to pursue wealth-building careers. Their model blends workforce development with mentorship and community. In Salinas, Watsonville, Gilroy, Modesto, and Stockton, youth ages 14 to 24 walk into welcoming, tech-enabled spaces and leave with industry certifications, internships, and career momentum. One big bottleneck: scaling customized learning without losing personal connection. Personalized lesson plans take time, and time is always in short supply. At the Jam, Digital NEST’s VP of Programs designed a step-by-step guide that empowers instructors to build and train their own AI-powered curriculum assistants. The assistants help educators adapt existing lesson plans to different class sizes, member interests, and learning styles, saving hours of prep time while ensuring every young person receives a tailored, engaging experience. The impact will be immediate. Educators feel supported, and the programs scale without losing what matters most: connection and belonging.

Black Owned NWA: Bentonville, AR Jasmine Hudson, Co-Founder and one of two people behind Black Owned NWA, had never used ChatGPT until the OpenAI Nonprofit Jam. Early in the day, she was met with a simple prompt: “Create a flyer for the upcoming expo.” With a few past examples and a couple of quick iterations, a draft appeared—formatted, polished, and ready to post. A clean, compelling piece of collateral to promote the BlackOwned Business Expo, a community-led event designed to elevate minority-owned businesses across northwest Arkansas. Usually, marketing assets like flyers fall to Hudson’s CoFounder, J’Aaron Merchant, who manages the creative side of Black Owned NWA. But at this moment, it wasn’t just about a faster workflow—it was a breakthrough. In the past, designing a single flyer could take hours. Without formal training, Hudson was used to spending late nights adjusting fonts, tweaking copy, and hoping it all looked professional enough to post. And even when it worked, it came at the cost of time she could have spent doing the thing she does best: showing up for the community she serves. For Black Owned NWA, visibility is everything. The organization exists to spotlight minority-owned businesses across northwest Arkansas through expos, events, and campaigns that engage over 8,000 community members each year. At the Jam, she saw what it felt like to skip the formatting and get straight to the message. ChatGPT didn’t erase the need for creativity or care—it just lowered the lift. It gave her back precious hours and the space to do the real work.

The event offered a quiet but undeniable truth: the future of AI’s impact won’t be crafted solely in labs or boardrooms. It will take shape prompt by prompt, prototype by prototype, in partnership with people doing the work today.

“When more people have access to transformative tools, they can reach more people, solve more problems, and create change that lifts entire communities.” —Chris Lehane Chief Global Affairs Officer OpenAI

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“Make yourself necessary to the world.” ―Ralph Waldo Emerson

© 2025 Emerson Collective. All rights reserved. Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Photography by: FieldAI Christopher Payne / Esto (incl. cover), NASA / JPL-Caltech California Forever Tracy L. Chandler, Barbara Kinney, Bison Archives and HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com, Historic Hollywood Photographs / Los Angeles Public Library, Underwood Archives / Alamy, Vatikaki / Dreamstime.com, Getty Images (Bettmann, Smith Collection / Gado, James D. Wilson) Yosemite Innovative Genomics Institute, Barbara Kinney, Getty Images (Jason Edwards, MTStock Studio) Antora Barbara Kinney, Mihail Svirkov / Stocksy United, Getty Images (020 Creative) Amplify Getty Images (paci77) OpenAI Barbara Kinney, Dave Abbott, Mateo & Company, Devin Scheer, Taylor Mickal, Alec Hutson, Rick Aguilar Studios, Autumn Theodore, Ben Solati, Deja Vu Productions, Stephen Edwards

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