side quests
the fro roster and the orbit around it — the subsidiaries, the incubator's own programs, the founders' other work, and the line beyond convergent.
the fro roster
- 2021–e11 bio · activeconnectomics, alameda — andrew payne and todd huffman's brain-mapping fro, the boyden-lab project that was 'the original inspiration' for the model. prism shipped october 2025 (>750x label diversity, 8x tracing accuracy, cc-by-nc); the claim is a mouse connectome in five years for ~$100m. establishment year self-reports inconsistently — announced october 2021, 'launched in 2022' per e11.bio.
- 2021–cultivarium · activethe laboratory for extraordinary microbes, watertown — henry lee and nili ostrov's fro for non-model organisms. 106 of 14,000+ atcc organisms have ever been studied; cultivarium built the organism portal, a custom electroporator, and genome-based growth prediction, plus an atcc×igem collaboration.
- 2023–parallel squared technology institute · activethe parallel squared technology institute, watertown — nikolai slavov and harrison specht's proteomics fro, funded out of the schmidt/griffin $50m. plexdia claims ~30x parallelization in mass-spec proteomics.
- 2023–eve bio · activepharmome mapping, durham nc — eve bio's systematic screen of every drug against every human protein. first public data release: 19 nuclear receptors × 1,397 compounds, cc by-nc-sa, hugging face write-up. fred houskeeper is ceo.
- 2023–forest neurotech · activewhole-brain ultrasound bci — sumner norman and taylor aflalo's fro, incubated at the astera institute before joining convergent. a five-year, $20m co-development deal with butterfly network (october 2023) built the forest 1 device, in an nhs trial by january 2025.
- 2023–[c]worthy · activeocean carbon-dioxide-removal quantification, boulder — matt long and alicia karspeck's mrv fro; the oae efficiency map with carbonplan shipped october 2024. its funders include noaa and arpa-e — the first us-government money in the fro portfolio.
- 2023–lean fro · activethe lean proof assistant's upkeep — leonardo de moura and sebastian ullrich's fro, funded by simons foundation international, sloan, richard merkin, and founders pledge, later joined by alex gerko's $5m through the ai for math fund. deepmind's imo-silver system ran on lean — the portfolio's most quotable downstream use.
- 2023–imprint · active'forensic immunology,' new york — beck brachman and nicholas greiff's fro decoding immune memory for chronic-disease research. publicly launched may 2025 with $15m from the schmidts, nycedc, peter reinhardt, and others.
- 2023–2025chi-fro · handed-offprobabilistic computing — machine-executable models of mind, vikash mansinghka and josh tenenbaum. at convergent 2023–2025, then transitioned to the probabilistic computing foundation in february 2026 — the first non-death outcome in the fro line. governance and equity mechanics undisclosed.
- 2025–dragonfly · activeastrophysics, chile — roberto abraham and pieter van dokkum's mothra array, 1,140 eyes on the cosmic web, funded by alex gerko/xtx. yale news covered it march 2026; the nature paper (~june 2026, reported) and a science bow-shock feature followed.
- 2026–meridial · activeliving-brain connectivity microscopy, london — kathleen fisek's fro, launched april 2026 with a £14m initial aria award. the first of the uk cohort out of the founder residency.
- 2026–echo labs · activeecological intelligence, london — the second uk fro, launched alongside meridial; wasik, blank, and tindall. the aria frost-uk proof that the residency model converts.
- 2026–melody · activeopen bioelectronics for continuous molecular monitoring, pasadena — anand muthusamy's fro, incubated at convergent and publicly launched september 7, 2026 via a founder-authored roadmap post. not yet on the ecosystem page.
the incubator's own work
- 2025–the gap map · continuinggap-map.org — the 'fundamental development gap map,' a public database of the bottlenecks the thesis names, launched april 2025. the fro-shaped problem made enumerable.
- 2025–essential technology · continuingthe essential technology blog — launched february 2025 with marblestone's 'how to build essential technology.' carries the gap map launch, the residency dispatches, gamick's keynote, and the nsf rfi responses: the incubator's own press organ.
- 2025–the founder residency · continuingthe uk fro founder residency with aria — roughly ninety to a hundred applications, five teams, six months — that produced meridial and echo labs. institutional manufacturing run as a cohort, not a pipeline.
- 2025–the metascience alliance · continuingconvergent joined the metascience alliance at its july 2025 launch in london — 830 participants from ~65 countries, gamick's day-3 keynote. the field-building arm.
the founders' and members' orbits
- pre-2021the pre-convergent orbit · continuingmarblestone's orbit before the incubator: helped start biobright; chief strategy officer at kernel; research scientist at google deepmind and in boyden's mit lab; fas fellow; schmidt futures innovation fellow; consulting research director for longevity at astera; boards at norn group, new science, and speculative technologies; the longitudinal science blog runs alongside.
- 2024–renaissance philanthropy · activekalil's post-schmidt vehicle — renaissance philanthropy, launched may 2024 with kumar garg and a founding donation from eric and wendy schmidt. runs the 'big if true science' accelerator (which incubates its own fros), mid-scale-science playbooks, and the $18m xtx ai for math fund. a sibling, not a parent.
- 2023–futurehouse · activerodriques' own shop — futurehouse, co-founded 2023, a private lab for ai-for-science that sits outside the canonical fro line; his cell commentary the same year catalogued fro-like organizations.
- 2021–the fro board seats · continuinggamick's second job — she sits on the boards of forest neurotech, eve bio, cultivarium, dragonfly, and [c]worthy, plus the unitary fund. the governance half of 'mission control': convergent holds board seats in the orgs it hatches.
the fro line beyond convergent
- 2021–rejuvenome (astera × buck) · activethe astera institute's rejuvenome — a $70m, ~seven-year multi-omics aging-intervention mouse study with the buck institute, announced october 13, 2021. astera calls it 'the first fro' it funded — the third fro of the launch wave and the proof the model travels outside convergent. outcomes still pending.
- 2022–parpa → speculative technologies · activeben reinhardt's parpa — the 'private arpa' program-manager model — became speculative technologies in 2023. not fros but the same scene: the complementary template the discourse pairs convergent against, with marblestone on its board and an aria collaboration of its own.
- 2024–bind research · activebind research — the independent uk fro for disordered proteins, competitively funded through the uk's research ventures catalyst. the fro line that never passed through convergent.
- 2025–nsf tech labs · activensf tip's tech labs pilot — up to $1b for fro-style independent labs, the model's federal adoption. convergent answered the rfi and offered to be the implementation partner; whether the nonprofit/public-goods/sunset features survive federalization is the open question.
- 2025ifp's x-labs · continuingthe institute for progress's x-labs proposal — caleb watney's x02 execution awards (≈ fros) and x03 block grants (≈ incubators like convergent). the mission-control pattern generalized into policy language.
AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.