Nate Crosser 🔸

Karma: 220

Venture capitalist, writer, and artist interested in effective animal advocacy. Currently VP of Investments at Spring Innovation Fund, non-profit venture philanthropy fund accelerating animal welfare technologies on farms and fisheries. https://springfund.com/

Former lead of startup & investor support work at the Good Food Institute (GFI), an EA org that supports alternative protein. Former Principal at Blue Horizon Corporation AG, a large Swiss impact investment firm in agro/biotech. J.D. in Commercial Law and B.A in Economics from the University of Kansas.

My blog, Fifth Industrial, covers Solarpunk topics like cellular agriculture and permaculture (ecotech.substack.com). My art website is natecrosser.com.

Nate Crosser 🔸 7 Aug 2026 22:04 UTC
2 points
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on: New role: Director of Operations and Growth for Animal Welfare Org
Happy to see this! I work at a new org accelerating animal welfare technologies for farms and fisheries. https://springfund.com/. If it would be helpful, DM me and I’m happy to discuss strategies or collaboration ops

Nate Crosser 🔸 30 Jun 2026 18:49 UTC
5 points
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on: Announcing Spring: a Venture Studio and Fund for Animal Welfare Tech
Thanks for the write up, Eitan. A venture philanthropy fund as an animal welfare megaproject has been top of mind for me for years. Your strategic thinking (and Milo’s) refined the concept into something uniquely catalytic. Grateful to work on Welfare Tech alongside you and the other great orgs in this field.

Nate Crosser 🔸 6 Jun 2026 17:04 UTC
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on: Hyperstition for Good winner: “The Uncertainty Log”
Thanks for this lovely solarpunk vignette! I believe net positive-welfare farming is possible.

Nate Crosser 🔸 23 May 2026 18:12 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Fai’s comment on: With the influx of new funding, don’t hunt for new problems—stop suffering first
Thanks, Fai. I like your ideas. Virtual Control Groups and LLM-agents are especially interesting to me right now. I want to look into the state of digital twins for various animals. This could not only obviate some animal testing, but also facilitate better translational medicine between humans, farmed animals, companion animals, and wild animals. It might also help us model levels of suffering and welfare improvement associated with interventions like novel pesticides, without the need for physical experimentation. Models would probably mostly cover individual physiology, but could also model population dynamics on farms or in the wild. Aware of anything on these fronts?
Also, your comment on pond loaches reminded me of our ~2021 discussions around animals in the long term future in space. I am planning on revisiting some of those topics.

Nate Crosser 🔸 22 May 2026 18:47 UTC
5 points
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on: With the influx of new funding, don’t hunt for new problems—stop suffering first
Great write up! I especially appreciate your one-line descriptions of some of the largest AW issues. Are you aware of any kind of database where these issues are catalogued, and if so, could you point me to it? We have a long list of interventions, but having a long list of discrete welfare issues would be at least equally useful.

Nate Crosser 🔸 22 May 2026 18:43 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Mo Putera’s comment on: With the influx of new funding, don’t hunt for new problems—stop suffering first
@Fai had some excellent and prescient ideas. Anything new come to mind, Fai?

Nate Crosser 🔸 22 Apr 2026 14:11 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: abrahamrowe’s comment on: Humane Pesticides Are Massively Morally Urgent
Hi, could you send me some information on what youre working on? I may do some venture investing in this area

Nate Crosser 🔸 12 Feb 2026 21:34 UTC
3 points
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on: Turning Farms into Welfare Labs
Cool idea. I assume you’re tracking Innovate Animal Ag already; they might be interested in this

Nate Crosser 🔸 6 Feb 2026 16:50 UTC
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in reply to: oli.beatson’s comment on: Artists for EA / EA for Artists—Seeking Ideas
Hi Oli, I appreciate your thoughtful reply and share much of your sentiment. Indeed, we must protect the flame. The inner fire I have for positive impact (especially animal welfare) is equally critical, but I find it’s sometimes hard to give both the attention they need. Personally, I think it would improve my art to attend to both simultaneously, but probably not improve my impact (unless I come up with some better ideas).

Nate Crosser 🔸 29 Jan 2026 1:00 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: JoanMM🔹’s comment on: Artists for EA / EA for Artists—Seeking Ideas
I haven’t yet but plan to. From what I can see in the forum and LinkedIn, the main focus is/was getting donation pledges from successful artists.

Nate Crosser 🔸 15 Jun 2022 23:00 UTC
25 points
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on: Megaprojects for animals
Some of my favorite ideas (some listed above):
1. Venture philanthropy fund—evergreen fund (profits get recycled to make more investments) to invest in technologies/companies that improve animal lives (alt proteins, more humane slaughter, conservation, etc)
2. Hedge fund/venture scout model—turn high performing individuals in non-grantmaking roles into part-time grantmakers by giving them philanthropic budgets to deploy autonomously (and only continue giving them funds if they show “impact returns”)
3. Longtermist Animal Welfare NGO—this seems almost completely neglected by both EA LT’s and non-EA AW people but there are many long-term nightmare scenarios we are not defending against (e.g. CAFOs in space, insect farming, digital animals, animal pandemics).
4. Endow a university institute—I am not aware of any institutes dedicated to the study and promotion of animal welfare. “Animal health” is very common at the American land grant universities but in practice “animal health” means the opposite of animal welfare
5. Mass media—funding of documentaries and other media that can convince mainstream consumers to stop eating animal products or otherwise expand their moral circle
6. Asset management—Create a philanthropic private equity fund to engage in shareholder activism (such as Carl Ichan’s failed bid with McDonalds)
7. Infrastructure fund for alternative proteins—there is a desperate need for plant protein extraction infrastructure and precision fermentation/cultivated meat bioprocessing infrastructure (about $60Bn needed total). Venture capital largely won’t invest because they are too capital intensive and governments mostly refuse to support the sector due to agribusiness lobbying power. Loan guarantees would help too.
8. Supercharging existing EA AW orgs and Charity Entrepreneurship
9. Impact litigation to make factory farming a liability like Legal Impact for Chickens
Happy to share additional details on anything! These are mostly finance based as that is my background.
What links here?
- Nate Crosser 🔸's comment on Announcing Spring: a Venture Studio and Fund for Animal Welfare Tech by EitanF (30 Jun 2026 18:49 UTC; 5 points)

Nate Crosser 🔸 12 Jun 2022 22:50 UTC
19 points
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in reply to: DC’s comment on: Why the expected numbers of farmed animals in the far future might be huge
Unfortunately, I don’t think it is true that “they would be taken better care of as a matter of course due to how scarce resources are.” Our current model of animal agriculture is to operate the system incredibly efficiently overall but with no regard for the welfare of the individual animal. “Animal health” is a billion dollar industry constantly optimizing this. The animals are kept alive with drugs and careful diets but live short lives of physical and mental distress until their bodies quickly reach slaughter age. I imagine this system in space would be even more suffering-causing and unnatural than dark sheds. Chickens that died, for example, in a space CAFO would probably just be recycled to more chicken feed.

Nate Crosser 🔸 9 Jun 2022 2:22 UTC
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in reply to: James Faville’s comment on: Who is protecting animals in the long-term future?
Hi James, I would love to read these reports. I’m considering doing a deeper dive into this. My email is ncrosser@gmail.com if you’re willing to share.

Nate Crosser 🔸 2 Jun 2022 20:42 UTC
43 points
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on: New Harvest, the nonprofit nucleus of cellular agriculture, is in crisis. Emergency town hall on 6/10.
I work in the alt protein industry and am a supporter of New Harvest (NH). I previously worked at their chief “competitor” the Good Food Institute (GFI). I donate to NH because they provide an essential counterpart and counterbalance to GFI. NH also seems more nimble and oftentimes more risk-tolerant or creative, though less operationally excellent and globalized. Their budget is routinely small compared to GFI and yet constantly find ways to add value to the industry. It is hard to imagine the cellular agriculture movement, or alt proteins, without NH. I would urge others in this community to support New Harvest.

Nate Crosser 🔸 23 Mar 2022 14:19 UTC
10 points
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on: Who is protecting animals in the long-term future?
Alene, I think about this all the time! I’ve thought about starting a project or NGO solely to focus on preventing animal agriculture from being a component of space colonization. If we do successfully colonize the cosmos then it could be that the vast majority of humans will end up living elsewhere than Earth. We could be at a unique point in history where we are actively laying the cultural and technological groundwork for those future societies. I wrote a blog on the space food topic that might interest you https://ecotech.substack.com/p/spacefood?s=w

Nate Crosser 🔸 9 Feb 2022 20:21 UTC
6 points
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on: The Case for Rare Chinese Tofus
Nice idea! As an alt protein investor, I have been waiting for more exciting tofu companies to emerge in the west. I do like your argument why we should be promoting tofu right now due to its versatility and uniqueness. That said, I’d push back on the suggested intervention of promoting rare chinese tofus. There are not existing supply chains or known westernized recipes for them, like there are for simple tofus. Perhaps a better use of resources would be promoting ways of utilizing tofus that people can already readily buy, or even promotion of the true health benefits of soy.

Nate Crosser 🔸 24 Nov 2021 20:39 UTC
20 points
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in reply to: HStencil’s comment on: Announcing our 2021 charity recommendations
New Harvest, which I think is great, also discontinued what I consider to be their major program (research grants) this year, so it’s a head scratcher.

Nate Crosser 🔸 24 Nov 2021 20:38 UTC
39 points
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in reply to: Patrick Gruban 🔸’s comment on: Announcing our 2021 charity recommendations
I left GFI in early 2021 for a new opportunity, but stay close with them. Nothing has drastically changed or degraded there. If truly one allegation of “retaliation” against an employee is enough to totally knock off Top Charity, I’m suspicious of the process. We know that The Counter article on the challenges to cultivated meat wasn’t the cause—as has been pointed out—because New Harvest (a cultivated meat NGO) is still a Standout Charity. Reading between the lines, it seems they think GFI is overfunded.