SlarsonTech LLC · Independent studio

Living science, at work.

SlarsonTech is the studio of Stephen Larson: a computer scientist trained in AI at MIT, a neuroscientist, and a company builder who co-founded MetaCell and led its sales and strategy as CEO. We advise the people turning the science of living systems into companies, and put AI to work inside their teams.

Start a conversation See the track record
MITBS & MEng, Computer Science; AI thesis
UC San DiegoPhD, Neuroscience
Nature · Neuron2,000+ citations
NYT · Wired& The Atlantic
01 — Track record

Living systems, modeled and shipped.

MetaCell · Co-founder, Chairman & former CEO

Built, grown and sold across the life sciences.

Stephen co-founded MetaCell and ran it as CEO, leading sales and strategy, and built it on revenue, with just $100K of outside capital. MetaCell builds data, analysis and AI software for the life sciences, from a US base with subsidiaries in the UK and Italy. Under his leadership it sold to pharma, biotech, healthcare and med-device companies, academia and non-profits.

$17.5Mrevenue from customers
$100Koutside capital, ever
~300deals closed
30people in US, UK & Italy
metacell.us
OpenWorm Foundation · Executive Director

A whole animal, simulated.

OpenWorm is the international open-science effort to simulate the C. elegans roundworm at the cellular level, from its nervous system to the physics of its muscles, soft tissue and the fluid it swims in. Stephen leads the foundation and co-authored the project's peer-reviewed overviews.

302neurons
95muscle cells
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, 2018Frontiers in Comp. Neuroscience, 2014openworm.org
Remote-first · Global teams

Teams without borders.

Stephen has led fully remote teams for more than a decade, at the company he co-founded and at the open-science foundation he runs: engineers, scientists and volunteers spread across countries and time zones, shipping together without a shared office.

Inside the studio · AI agents

A studio that runs on agents.

Day to day, SlarsonTech runs on a team of 19 AI agents that Stephen designed and directs. They research, draft, schedule, keep the records and check one another's facts, and nothing leaves the studio without a person's sign-off.

02 — What we do

Sharper decisions. AI that does the work.

A / Advisory

Strategic business advisory

For founders and research leaders turning science into companies: who buys it, how to sell it, and how to build the community around it.

  • Go-to-market & sales strategy
  • Open-source & community strategy
  • Spinouts, partnerships & company formation
  • Technical & market diligence for investors
  • Board service & governance
B / Applied AI

AI that does the work

AI agents put to work in research and the business around it, wired into the tools a team already uses, with the checks that keep them honest.

  • AI for R&D
  • Agent teams, designed & directed
  • Fact-checking, evaluation & guardrails
  • A person signs off on every output
  • Hands-on team enablement
C / Executive-builder

An executive who builds

Advisory and applied AI in one person: a former software engineer, CEO and sales leader who sets direction with you, then builds the first version with AI.

  • Fractional & interim executive roles
  • Strategy & prototype from one person
  • Sales, product & science in one seat
  • AI tools for the leadership team itself
  • Built to hand over to your team
03 — Point of view

Biology is becoming computable.

i.

Models are becoming evidence.

In April 2025 the FDA set out a plan to reduce and replace animal testing in drug development, naming AI-based computational models among the approaches it now encourages. Read the announcement.

ii.

Build life from the bottom up.

Behavior comes out of cells, connections and physics. A model built from those parts and checked against real measurements can explain what it predicts, which a statistical shortcut cannot.

iii.

AI agents belong in the lab.

Agents can already run much of the analysis, paperwork and coordination around research. We run this studio on them, and we help teams put them to work.

04 — About

Stephen Larson

How computers can help us understand life
An expert on the intersection between computer technology and biological systems.
  • SlarsonTechFounder & Principal
  • MetaCellCo-founder & Chairman; former CEO, led sales & strategy
  • OpenWorm FoundationExecutive Director
  • Mental health non-profitFormer Chief Information Officer
  • New York City investment bankFormer software engineer

Stephen holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Engineering in Computer Science from MIT and a PhD in Neuroscience from UC San Diego. His MIT master's thesis, in artificial intelligence with Patrick Winston, showed how a machine can learn symbols from what it sees and does; MIT later assigned it in its Human Intelligence Enterprise course (read the thesis).

His research spans neuroinformatics, computational neuroscience and computational biology: mapping brain circuits, building shared ontologies and atlases so neuroscientists can pool their data, and simulating a whole animal. He has more than 70 publications, cited more than 2,000 times, including papers in Nature, Neuron, PLoS Computational Biology and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (Google Scholar). He has co-developed a patent and presented at more than two dozen forums, and his work has been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired and MSNBC.com.

His network spans the buyers he has sold to across pharma, biotech, healthcare and med-device companies, academic research labs, and a worldwide open-science community.

05 — After hours

Tech for the dance floor.

Alongside the science and the companies, the studio also invests in performances that only technology makes possible, built for rooms full of people.

Sound · Original mixes

Original DJ mixes.

Sets built from the ground up and recorded or played live, made for rooms that want to move together.

Light · Dynamic LED

Light that plays along.

Dynamic LED displays that answer the music as it happens, so the sound and the room move as one.

Experience · Digital ecstatic

Experiences you feel.

Creative digital experiences designed for collective joy, where sound, light and space are composed together.

Spatial · Apple Vision Pro

Core Sudoku, in your space.

The studio's first step into spatial computing: Sudoku for Apple Vision Pro, with endless puzzles floating in a calm, uncluttered space around you. No ads, no distractions.

Core Sudoku

Notes from the work.

Occasional updates on what we're building. No spam; unsubscribe in one click.

Have a hard problem? Let's talk.

Studio

San Diego, CA