🧬 Silicon Valley’s IQ-Boosting Baby Craze: When Startups Go Prenatal

Move over, AI—Silicon Valley is now working on smart babies. Tech CEOs are reportedly ready to drop tens of thousands of dollars to select embryos predicted to have high IQs. Because why let evolution do its thing when you can pay for genetics? 😎


🤖 From AI Fears to Smart Babies

Tsvi Benson-Tilsen, a mathematician who spent 7 years trying to figure out how to protect humanity from AI, threw in the towel on stopping machines from taking over. His new solution? Make smarter humans.

“My gut tells me this is one of our most realistic hopes,” says Benson-Tilsen, co-founder of the Berkeley Genomics Project, a nonprofit promoting embryo gene screening.

🧪 IVF: Now With Extra IQ Points

In Silicon Valley, parents are spending up to $50,000 on genetic testing to select the “smartest” embryos.

  • Elon Musk encourages highly intelligent people to reproduce.

  • Matchmakers charge up to $500,000 to connect tech CEOs with Ivy League-worthy mates.

“They want kids as smart as their spreadsheets,” quips Jennifer Donnelly, a top-tier matchmaker. 💼📊

📊 The Math of Baby-Making

Parents like Simone and Malcolm Collins use services like Herasight to analyze embryos. They even created spreadsheets to weigh IQ against disease risk:

“How much Alzheimer’s risk is acceptable to gain 10 IQ points?” 🤔

The end result: a daughter selected as top-scoring in IQ prediction.

⚠️ Experts caution: these tests only explain 5-10% of IQ differences—so don’t expect a tiny Einstein just yet.

⚖️ Ethics vs. Obsession

Bioethicists warn this could create a genetic elite while everyone else becomes, well… ordinary humans.
In the Valley, ethical hand-wringing takes a backseat to maximizing IQ.

💡 The Silicon Valley Takeaway

  • Smart parents + IVF + genetic screening = premium offspring 👶💡

  • Traditional methods (education, marrying smart partners) still work—but less Silicon Valley-cool.

  • Driving idea? If humans can be smarter, maybe we can outsmart AI too.

“I care about things that create a huge impact—and more geniuses, in the truest sense of the word,” says Benson-Tilsen.


Silicon Valley is investing in baby brainpower like it’s a startup. Forget AI taking over—these parents are making sure humanity’s next generation comes with a built-in high IQ (and maybe a spreadsheet or two). 📈🍼


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