Out there, there are several startup companies working to automate the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF). One of them is Overture Life, which has developed a sperm injection robot which it claims is the first step towards automation of IVF. This has the potential to make the IVF procedure even cheaper and much more common than it is today.
One of the engineers used a Sony PlayStation 5 controller to position the robotic needle, which guides a human egg through the camera and then moves forward on its own, piercing the egg and releasing a single sperm. The robot was used to fertilize more than a dozen eggs, resulting in healthy embryos and two baby girls, who the researchers said were the first to be born after "robot" fertilization.
Other startups, such as AutoIVF, IVF 2.0, Conceivable Life Sciences, and Fertilis, have a similar goal of automating IVF and making it more accessible to patients who can't afford the high costs of IVF treatments. Overture alone has raised around $37 million from investors, including Khosla Ventures and Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube.
The goal of IVF automation is to produce more babies — around 500,000 children are born via IVF globally each year. But, most people who need help having children either don't have access to fertility drugs or can't afford them. Still, fully automating IVF won't be easy, as the process involves a dozen procedures - and this Overture robot does only a fraction. Other doctors are still skeptical that robots can, or should, replace embryologists in the near future, because humans are so much better than machines at delicately handling sperm and eggs.
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