Convergent Research is an incubator for philanthropic ventures founded in 2021 and funded by

Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former computer engineer who was the chief executive officer of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's chairman, executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also was the ...

, Wendy Schmidt and Ken Griffin as part of the Schmidt Futures Network. Convergent Research is designed to identify high-impact scientific or technological R&D fields, then launch companies to address these fields with a structure they call ''Focused Research Organizations'' (FROs). As of 2023, there are 7 FROs.

Focused Research Organizations (FROs)

A Focused Research Organization, or FRO, is a type of

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

designed to address technical problems or perform scientific research. They differ from academic research labs in that they have medium-to-large size teams with corporate structures, embrace projects which are unlikely to yield publishable results, and frequently involve scientists and engineers collaborating across disciplines. FRO projects are not profitable enough in their initial stages for them to constitute a

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

, and unlike

think tank A think tank, or public policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governme ...

s or

research institute A research institute, research centre, or research organization is an establishment founded for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often implies natural ...

s, tend to pursue specific technical goals rather than general research. Once their technical goals are achieved, FROs may evolve into more traditional non-profits, or become backed by

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

and transform into startups.

List of FROs

* Development for

Lean (proof assistant) Lean is a proof assistant and a Functional programming, functional programming language. It is based on the calculus of constructions with inductive types. It is an open-source project hosted on GitHub. Development is currently supported by the N ...

is supported by a FRO. * E11 bio has a goal of creating a single-cell neural circuit mapping tool. * Cultivarium * ParallelSq Technology Institute * EvE Bio * Forest Neuro * orthy

References

External links

*{{official Philanthropic organizations Research and development organizations