Stripe, Anthropic, and OpenAI are backing a new $500 million nonprofit called Intercept, which aims to prevent the common cold and the flu, with the eventual goal of eliminating respiratory viruses. The payment company Stripe, founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison, will fund the initiative, which will use grants and investments to support prevention approaches including vaccines and large-scale air-cleaning systems for schools, offices, and other public spaces. Other funders include Anthropic, Flu Lab, the OpenAI Foundation, Bill Gates, and several traders at Jane Street Capital. Nan Ransohoff, the Stripe executive leading the initiative, said people spend 5% of their lifetime fighting a cold or the flu, but drug companies put relatively little effort into preventing colds because the sniffles are caused by more than 200 different viruses, according to the American Lung Association. Ransohoff noted that removing carbon from the atmosphere and getting rid of respiratory viruses are similar in that each is "technically possible" but they "lack commercial incentives." The concept for Intercept took shape after Ransohoff spoke with David Veesler, a structural biologist at the University of Washington, who argued that broad countermeasures working against many viruses at once are possible.