Nucleus Genomics, the New York-based genetics company whose investors include Founders Fund, the venture capital fund founded by Peter Thiel, has unveiled Vitruvian, a suite of artificial intelligence models that, according to the company, allows selection of the highest-IQ embryo obtained through in vitro fertilization. Its founder and CEO, Kian Sadeghi, announced it in an X post with a transhumanist tone: “AI is getting smarter. Now humanity can too.”
Sadeghi claimed that the Vitruvian intelligence model can “optimize” embryonic DNA by up to 14 IQ points, nearly one standard deviation. The company states it has trained the system on more than one million people, validated it with over 40,000 siblings, and analyzes more than seven million genetic markers. The procedure does not edit genes: couples submit DNA data from up to twenty embryos, each receives a score, and the parents choose which one to implant.
Scoring children and discarding the rest
Behind the operation lies a choice that the product’s mechanics make inevitable: if an embryo is selected for its intelligence score, height, or eye color, the others are relegated and, in practice, condemned to indefinite freezing or destruction. This is what Catholic doctrine calls eugenic selection. The instruction Dignitas personae, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2008), condemns preimplantation diagnosis when its purpose is to eliminate embryos based on their characteristics. Critics of Nucleus also accuse it of selling eugenics wrapped in technology, and Sadeghi has rejected that label, asserting that its “genetic optimization” is not eugenics “at all” because it merely provides “information” to people.
The company, founded in 2021 by Sadeghi while he was still a student after receiving a Thiel Fellowship, has raised about $32 million, including $14 million in its Series A round in January 2025, which included Founders Fund. That investment anchors Nucleus within the Silicon Valley ecosystem linked to Thiel, although the company itself signs and markets its services.
Disputed figures and warnings from geneticists
Nucleus’s figures have been questioned by specialists. Computational biologist Lior Pachter argued on X that the 10.8-point shift the company attributes to embryo selection depends on assuming there is no assortative mating, which, he says, is false for cognitive traits and contradicts the scientific paper on which the calculation is based.
For its part, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) has warned that polygenic embryo selection is advancing too quickly and with insufficient evidence. This is compounded by advertising oversight: the National Advertising Division, the U.S. advertising industry’s self-regulatory body, recommended on September 11 that Nucleus modify ads suggesting it could identify the highest-IQ embryo, and the company said it would appeal.
Nucleus had already drawn attention with its “Have Your Best Baby” campaign, which InfoVaticana reported in November 2025, when it plastered the New York subway with slogans such as “IQ is 50% genetic.” The in vitro fertilization industry, whose embryo costs we analyzed in another recent piece, thus offers one more step toward the made-to-order child.