Breakout Labs

Breakout Labs was a grant-making program of the Thiel Foundation (a philanthropic organization created by Peter Thiel) from 2011 until 2021. Breakout Labs issued convertible grants for early-stage commercialization of scientific research that was considered too speculative or long-term to interest the for-profit sector (such as angel investors and venture capitalists) but may have been unsuitable for traditional sources of funding for scientific research due to its radical or offbeat nature. Grants were made through a competitive application and selection process.

Founding Team

Executive Director: Lindy Fishburne

Scientific Director: Hemai Parthasarathy

Program Manager: Leonore Reiser

Recipients
Breakout Labs announced its first batch of grantees on April 17, 2012, its second batch of grantees on August 15, 2012, and its third batch of grantees in April 2013. In total, Breakout Labs made 50 investments before winding down the program in 2021:

Arigos Biomedical, 3Scan (merged into Strateos), Immusoft, Inspirotec, Longevity Biotech, Positron Dynamics, Entopsis, Modern Meadow, Bell Biosystems, Siva Therapeutics, General Genomics, Avetec, Skyphrase (acquired by Yahoo), Stealth Bio, Cytovale, Pareto Biotech, G-Tech Medical, Cortexyme (renamed Quince), Epibone, E3X Bio, Neumitra, Ion DX, C2Sense, Maxterial, Cytegen, nanoGrip Tech (now Setex), Seatrec, Zymochem, Opus 12 (renamed Twelve), Azitra, Envisagenics, Logicink, SciBac, Exabyte (renamed Mat3ra), Blumio (acquired by CardieX), Flightwave, UbiQD, RasLabs, Calwave, Peroxygen Systems (renamed Phase Two Chemicals), Pelitex, Orion, Curie Co, Nuclease Probe Tech, Inhalon, Napigen, Bioelectric, Drop Genie, Glyscend.

Shifting the focus to innovation
Peter Thiel has proposed a dichotomy between:


 * Intensive growth, which involves the creation of radical new technology. He likens this to "going from zero to one".
 * Extensive growth, which involves spreading existing technology to more people and making it faster, cheaper, and better. Globalization is an example of extensive growth. Thiel likens extensive growth to "going from 1 to N".

Thiel believes that too many people in business and philanthropy are focused on extensive growth and there is too little focus on intensive growth. Thiel thus concentrates most of his philanthropic efforts on efforts that he considers likely to lead to intensive growth, i.e., radical innovation. Breakout Labs is part of these efforts. Many of these themes are also covered in his similarly titled book Zero to One.

Media coverage
The announcement of Breakout Labs (October 2011), as well as the announcements of its first batch of grantees (April 2012), received considerable media attention. The first and second batches of grantees were covered by TechCrunch. Breakout Labs was also covered in Nature and Scientific American.