Convergent Research

Convergent Research is a non-profit science studio founded in 2021 that launches and supports Focused Research Organizations (FROs). These are time-bound entities built to tackle medium- to large-scale, cross-disciplinary problems in scientific infrastructure and tool-building that fall between academia and industry - projects too engineering-heavy for university labs and not commercially viable for private companies. Each FRO is backed by $20-50 million in funding, runs for three to seven years against pre-specified technical goals, and operates with full-time teams of engineers, scientists and operators. More than ten FROs have been established to date.

The organisation's stated aim is to produce public goods: tools, datasets and infrastructure that anyone can use. Technical domains include neuroscience, proteomics, synthetic biology, drug discovery datasets and brain neural circuit mapping. Alongside the FROs, Convergent Research maintains the Gap Map, a database that identifies critical R&D bottlenecks across 20 scientific fields and matches them with potential solutions.

Convergent Research is philanthropically funded, with more than $350 million raised from donors including Eric Schmidt, Wendy Schmidt and Ken Griffin. Its model combines the focused execution of a startup with the mission of a public research institution: projects are time-bound with clear milestones, and teams are staffed full-time to deliver on defined technical targets.