BREEDING better babies, which was once left to chance, is now becoming a business that scores, prices and optimizes what a birth may produce.

In California’s Silicon Valley, embryo screening is going beyond its traditional medical pretext and taking on a commercial approach. What began as a tool to avoid severe genetic diseases is now being repackaged to improve the odds for babies with better health, sharper brains, prettier faces and even greater academic potential.

This is not the gene editing of sci-fi that so worries many people on ethical grounds. It is something more mundane but perhaps as powerful.

A growing number of biotech startups now offer whole-genome sequencing for embryos, using a handful of cells to read billions of DNA base pairs. Their core product is not certainty but comparison.

Using polygenic risk scores, they aggregate thousands of genetic variants into a single profile, then rank embryos relative to one another. Parents are told which option looks “better” on paper.

Companies such as Orchid and Genomic Prediction have positioned their services carefully. They emphasize disease risk reduction, probability forecasting and informed choice. On Orchid’s website, it claims to sequence over 99 percent of an embryo’s DNA, noting “with much more data, more risks can be identified.”

Some companies do not stop at screening for clearly defined inherited diseases such as congenital heart defects or hemophilia. They go further, using algorithms to estimate an embryo’s future health risks, including the statistical likelihood of developing cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity or even schizophrenia.

These forecasts are not based on single disease-causing genes. They rely on correlations between thousands of genetic variants and population-level outcomes, a probability approach that sits at the heart of the controversy surrounding this industry.

What has drawn even greater attention is cognitive screening.

Some companies, such as Heliospect Genomics, Herasight and Nucleus Genomics, claim their models can use genetic data to estimate an embryo’s future intellectual potential, personality traits and physical characteristics. Some even claim algorithms that generate a projected “IQ potential” score for each embryo.

Beyond embryo selection, even more radical experiments are moving from theory into early-stage research.

Artificial wombs, lab-grown human eggs derived from stem cells, and other reproductive technologies are no longer confined to speculative science. One of the most closely watched efforts comes from Conception, a startup backed by OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman, which is exploring ways to convert ordinary blood cells into human eggs.

This is technically ambitious but ethically seismic.

For now, however, these realms remain largely at the frontier of biotech. What is already real, and quietly expanding, is the market built around embryo screening and selection.

In July 2025, The Washington Post confirmed that Elon Musk has at least one child conceived through embryo genetic screening. And he’s not alone among Silicon Valley elite. According to the newspaper’s investigation, the world’s oldest-known “super babies” are now over 5 years old, and the global number was estimated to have reached hundreds in 2025.

The parents are predominantly Silicon Valley technology executives, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, a narrow but influential group that now forms the core customer base of this emerging market.

A full cycle of embryo sequencing, scoring and selection typically costs between US$50,000 and US$200,000. That price point alone defines the market. The clients are overwhelmingly high-income families, people already accustomed to thinking in probabilities and assessing returns against risks.

To them, embryo selection is framed less as playing God and more as risk management. Compared with elite private schools, legacy admissions or early-stage venture bets, the logic feels familiar. Make the best decision with the information available. Act early. Accept that nothing is guaranteed.

The timing of this shift is no accident. In 2003, sequencing a human genome cost roughly US$3 billion. Today, it costs under US$1,000, roughly the price of an iPhone. What once required years of expert analysis can now be processed in hours, powered by AI-driven algorithms.

This is one development race where China isn’t yet competing with the US. America has few limitations on use of genetic screening. China has plenty.

In China, embryo genetic testing is currently limited to medical considerations such as screening for severe hereditary diseases or chromosome abnormalities. Commercial services that rank embryos by intelligence, appearance or other non-medical traits, are not legally available under China’s existing regulatory and ethical framework.

“Pre-implantation genetic testing should be limited to chromosomal disorders and single-gene diseases,” said Qiao Jie, a leading Beijing-based expert in assisted reproduction.

Strip away the hype, however, and the science behind the super-baby business looks far less decisive. According to peer-reviewed medical literature, current models explain less than 10 percent of the variation in complex traits such as intelligence. Even under optimistic assumptions, selecting embryos based on scores raises predicted IQ perhaps a statistically insignificant three to four points on average.

The larger risk, however, lies beyond accuracy. Genes do not operate independently. They cluster. Selecting for one trait can increase the likelihood of another due to genetic linkage. Multiple studies have found correlations between genetic variants associated with higher cognitive ability and higher rates of autism spectrum traits.

No startup model can predict what happens when such selection pressures compound across generations. There is no control group for humanity.

The most profound impact of this emerging market may not be biological, but social.

Because embryo selection remains accessible only to the wealthy, advantage begins to shift earlier, from education and environment to biology itself.

“There’s no reason to think polygenic embryo screening will end with conditions like heart disease and diabetes,” said Katie Hasson, associate director of the Center for Genetics and Society. “Screening for schizophrenia and other mental illnesses is already on offer. These directly echo eugenic efforts to nix ‘feeble-mindedness.’ We are talking about deciding who should be born based on ‘good’ and ‘bad’ genes.”

If today’s screening thresholds had been applied a century ago, many figures who later reshaped science, art and culture might never have made it past the embryo stage. Vincent van Gogh lived with severe mental illness. Stephen Hawking contracted motor neuron disease. The young Albert Einstein was dismissed by teachers as a bit dim.

The danger is not a sudden dystopia, but a gradual narrowing of mobility. When access shapes genetics, inequality becomes harder to see and harder to reverse.

Yet evolution has never rewarded perfection. It rewards adaptability. Traits that appear disadvantageous in one environment often prove valuable in another. The classic example is the gene linked to sickle-cell disease: two copies cause severe illness, but one dramatically reduces the risk of malaria. Even color blindness, often framed as a defect, has been shown to improve night vision under low-light conditions.

Genetic diversity is not inefficiency. It is resilience.

Silicon Valley likes to say it builds the future.

The question is whether this future remains open or whether it starts closing before life even begins.