Join us as we venture into a world where innovation meets the unknown, and the future is anything but ordinary.

Capsula Mundi

Capsula Mundi is a project which envisions a different approach to the way we think about death. It's an egg-shaped pod made of biodegradable material, where departed loved ones are placed for burial.

Ashes will be held in small egg-shaped biodegradable urns, while bodies will be laid down in the foetal position in larger pods. The Capsula will then be buried as a seed in the earth. A tree, chosen in life by the deceased, will be planted on top of it and serve as a memorial for the departed, and as a legacy for posterity and the future of our planet.

Death is often seen as taboo in our society, and the designers of the Capsula Mundi wanted to change the view of the inevitable. The website states: “We believe that this unavoidable passage, so meaningful, is not the end, but the beginning of a way back to nature. Inspired by these reflections, we decided to redesign the coffin - an object entirely left out of the design world - using ecological materials, and universal life symbols, such as the egg and the tree.”

Colossal Biosciences

Colossal Biosciences is a biotechnology and genetic engineering company, working to genetically resurrect the woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, and now, the dodo. It recently revealed its plans to ‘de-extinct’ the dodo, more than 350 years after it was wiped out.

Back in 2022, scientists successfully sequenced a dodo’s entire genome for the first time from well-preserved DNA from a specimen in Denmark. After this revelation, startup Colossal Biosciences has made it a goal of theirs to bring the dodo back.

Colossal creates disruptive technologies for extinct species restoration, critically endangered species protection and the repopulation of critical ecosystems that support the continuation of life on Earth. The company is the first to apply Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology for species de-extinction, beginning with the woolly mammoth and now the dodo. The startup has a lot of funding behind it, in January 2023 it completed a $150 million funding round, and is valued at over $1 billion.

Nectome

Nectome is a neuroscience startup that aims to preserve the brain and keep all its memories intact. Founded in 2015 by Robert McIntyre, the research organisation is dedicated to advancing the science of memory. The startup designs and conducts experiments to discover how the brain physically creates memories, as well as developing biological preservation techniques to preserve the physical traces of memory.

For Nectome’s procedure to work, the brain must be fresh. The company says its plan is to connect people with terminal illnesses to a heart-lung machine to pump its mix of embalming chemicals into the big carotid arteries in their necks while they are still alive (under general anaesthesia).

The product is “100% fatal,” said McIntyre. “The user experience will be identical to physician-assisted suicide.”

SynDaver

SynDaver is a startup that manufactures sophisticated synthetic human tissues, body parts, and cadavers for surgical practice. Its patented technologies employ replaceable muscles, tendons, veins, arteries, and organs, all made from materials that mimic the physico-chemical properties of live tissue.

The SynDaver Surgical Model has a heart that pumps synthetic blood (pulsed flow away from the heart and drainage toward the heart), meaning the model can ‘bleed’, and can be used to perform airway procedures, including intubation and ventilation. The model is compatible with all known imaging systems, and all known medical devices, even those that employ directed energy, such as lasers and RF.

As well as the full-body surgical model, SynDaver also makes organ models, segmented models, and models of different animals like dogs and frogs to aid veterinary training.

Tomorrow Biostasis

Tomorrow Biostasis is a Berlin startup developing human cryopreservation so that future medical technology may revive people and treat their underlying cause of death.

Tomorrow Biostasis’ founder, Dr Emil Kendziorra, started his career in cancer research with the goal of contributing to life extension science. After realising that longevity science wasn’t advancing fast enough, Kendziorra switched his focus to biostasis. Its vision is to build a world where people can choose how long they want to live - independent of where they are, who they are, and their financial resources.

Biostasis, or cryopreservation, is a medical procedure where, upon death, your body (or brain) is preserved in a specialist storage facility in a state of stasis until medical technology advances in future decades to not only treat the original cause of your death but revive you to enjoy a second or extended life. Tomorrow Biostasis has cryopreserved "about ten people" for training purposes.

Creeping up

As we conclude our spooky exploration of the top tech startups in the darkest corners of innovation, one thing becomes clear: the future is as exciting as it is unsettling. These startups are pushing the boundaries, harnessing the power of technology to amaze and astonish.