Michael Polansky is training an AI model on skin that’s still alive | TechCrunch
Michael Polansky is training an AI model on skin that’s still alive | TechCrunch
摘要: Michael Polansky is remarkably unassuming for someone operating in a corner of the world known for outsize egos.
Seated at a leafy patio outside a po
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Michael Polansky is remarkably unassuming for someone operating in a corner of the world known for outsize egos.
Seated at a leafy patio outside a popular bakery in Mill Valley, an affluent town about 15 miles north of San Francisco, Polansky — bespectacled, his fresh face framed by dark hair shot through with gray — has the look and the friendly demeanor of a young professor.
He is, in fact, both the co-founder of a buzzy AI and biology startup called
Outer Biosciences
and the creative, business, and romantic partner to Stefani Germanotta — better known as Lady Gaga. It’s an unlikely double life. On the one hand, the couple invariably moves in the world that comes with celebrity; on the other, he’s running an outfit that has spent years figuring out how to keep living human tissue alive outside the body — for over a month, so far — without anyone outside the company knowing.
He didn’t see any of it coming. Polansky grew up in Minnesota and went on to Harvard, where he studied applied mathematics and computer science, graduating in 2006. Afterward, he logged three years at the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates — “a very unique place,” Polansky says over coffee, and one where he had “a really good experience,” even if it wasn’t a place he was going to “wake up and be excited about . . .every day.”
His pilgrimage from Bridgewater to Silicon Valley ran through Minnesota. By coincidence, Sean Parker’s assistant at the time had been Polansky’s neighbor growing up. At a 2009 wedding in their home state, she mentioned that Parker was looking for someone to work with him. Polansky already knew who Parker was and was looking to move west. The two had dinner in New York, “hit it off immediately,” and, as Polansky tells it, he quit Bridgewater the next day and moved to San Francisco.
He first landed a role as a principal at Founders Fund when the firm was run by its four original partners — Peter Thiel, Sean Parker, Luke Nosek and Ken Howery – with Polansky and another