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Tess van Stekelenburg
Lux Capital
901 posts
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Tess van Stekelenburg
Lux Capital
@velvetatom
Make life timeless & beautiful. Founder @valthostech | Partner @Lux_Capital
valthos.com
Joined September 2020
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    Oct 24, 2025
    Spent three years looking for a team in Biodefense to invest in. But never found one. So we built it ourselves. Valthos builds next-generation biodefense. As AI and biotech rapidly advance, we're approaching near-universal access to tools with the potential to cure humanity or
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    Valthos
    @ValthosTech
    Oct 24, 2025
    Valthos builds next-generation biodefense. Of all AI applications, biotechnology has the highest upside and most catastrophic downside. Heroes at the frontlines of biodefense are working every day to protect the world against the worst case. But the pace of biotech is against
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    Dec 7, 2024
    EB1A greencard: approved !!! 🌋🌋
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    192K
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    Feb 24, 2023
    We are in the early days of AI used as tool for biological design. It’s potential to design new proteins + DNA sequences from the building blocks of life is astonishing. Sat down w. @NatureBiotech to discuss the emerging field of Generative Biology.
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    AI-enhanced protein design makes proteins that have never existed
    From nature.com
    120K
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    Jun 28, 2024
    Unfortunately, I have concluded that I do not believe happy people build great things.
    177K
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    May 16, 2023
    Running an AI x BIO HACKATHON this month with @openbioml @huggingface @LatchBio. 🧬💻 - remote, GPU's & API's provided. Help me share this with any software engineers or bio friends you think are interested in joining. SIGN UP below👇 hackathon.bio
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    Jun 25, 2024
    Excited to finally announce & co-lead the $142M seed in EvolutionaryScale w/ @awscloud @nvidia @pdhsu @natfriedman @danielgross. And make ESM3 family available for *widespread* use as the first generative language model to jointly reason over sequence, structure & function ...
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    Alex Rives
    @alexrives
    Jun 25, 2024
    We have trained ESM3 and we're excited to introduce EvolutionaryScale. ESM3 is a generative language model for programming biology. In experiments, we found ESM3 can simulate 500M years of evolution to generate new fluorescent proteins. Read more: evolutionaryscale.ai/blog/esm3-rele…
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    Jun 25, 2024
    Biology has just about evolved biological tools for every function: including proteins that track and drive time. Fascinating to see the different proteins linking biological systems to the movement of our planet (day/night).
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    Jun 23, 2022
    All proteins that have existed on earth since life began v.s all the theoretical possibilities. Every living thing on earth that we know has been brought into existence from code in that small grey square.
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    Dec 6, 2023
    Best birthday present.
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    39K
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    Jul 6, 2022
    What if we could grow insulin on trees and harvest protein from fields of crops instead of animals? As an early stage investor, I often feel like I am living 10 years in the future, but plants as bio-factories are much closer than we think 💻🌿🧬.
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    Jun 14, 2023
    1/ We wrapped up the first large-scale Bio x ML hackathon last week with @huggingface, @openbioml, @LatchBio & @Lux_Capital Thrilled to share some of the projects at this nexus with you below:
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    Mar 8, 2024
    In the early 2000s, a group of early PayPal employees and founders came to be known as the “PayPal Mafia”. This group of men came to dominate + pave the roads of Silicon Valley. Big shout out to all the entrepreneurs in my life re-inventing what those roads look like today.
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    May 4, 2024
    zero-shot antibodies, nanoscale scaffolding of semiconductors & designer aquaporins for drought resistant plants - in our lifetime, we are going to witness biotechnology achieve some very strange & beautiful things.
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    Alfredo Andere
    @AlfredoAndere
    May 3, 2024
    Over the next two decades sequencing DNA and proteins will become practically free. The implications of that are impossibly hard to grasp and reason about, but they will be wild.
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    Tess van Stekelenburg
    Lux Capital
    @velvetatom
    Nov 9, 2022
    Absolute blast to talk at the Institute of Protein Design (@UWproteindesign) yesterday and brainstorm new frontiers of generative biology. Some 🤯 blowing work being done by this team: - Protein “Lego Blocks” - Self assembling semiconductors - New-to-nature enzymes
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