Lady Gaga's Fiancé Founded Outer Bio to Use AI for Predicting Skin Bioactive Compounds

Lady Gaga's fiancé Michael Polansky has founded a nonprofit, a venture capital firm, and an asset management company over the past decade. He also co-wrote 7 songs on Lady Gaga's sixth album and earned a Grammy nomination. His most ambitious project, Outer Bio, was founded in 2020 in Massachusetts, USA, to discover new bioactive compounds by studying human skin.

In 2022, Outer Bio developed a research platform called Yuna that keeps donated human full-thickness skin alive for up to four weeks. The platform uses 3D-printed scaffolds to deliver nutrients and remove waste. A single piece of skin can sometimes be divided into dozens of samples.

The company trains AI models on its own data to predict which compounds may have bioactive or toxic effects on human skin. Polansky stresses that Outer Bio is first and foremost a data company doing predictive AI, not generative AI.