Michael Polansky Is Training an AI Model on Living Human Skin

Michael Polansky is remarkably unassuming for someone operating in a corner of the world known for outsize egos. Seated at a leafy patio outside a popular bakery in Mill Valley, an affluent town about 15 miles north of San Francisco, Polansky—bespectacled, his fresh face framed by dark hair shot through with gray—has the look and the friendly demeanor of a young professor. He is, in fact, both the founder of a buzzy AI and biology startup called Outer Biosciences and the creative, business, and romantic partner to Stefani Germanotta—better known as Lady Gaga. It’s an unlikely double life. On one hand, the couple invariably moves in the world that comes with celebrity; on the other, he’s running an outfit that has spent years figuring out how to keep living human tissue alive outside the body—for over a month, so far—without anyone outside the company knowing. Polansky didn’t see any of it coming. He grew up in Minnesota and went on to Harvard, where he studied applied mathematics and computer science, graduating in 2006. Afterward, he logged three years at the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates—"a very unique place," Polansky says over coffee, and one where he had "a really good experience," even if it wasn’t a place he was going to "wake up and be excited about every day." His pilgrimage from Bridgewater to Silicon Valley ran through Minnesota. By coincidence, Sean Parker’s assistant at the time had been Polansky’s neighbor growing up. At a 2007 wedding in their home state, she mentioned that Parker was looking for someone to work with him. Polansky already knew who Parker was and was looking to move west. The two had dinner in New York, "hit it off immediately," and, as Polansky tells it, he quit Bridgewater the next day and moved to San Francisco. He first landed a role as a principal at Founders Fund when the firm was run by its four original partners—Peter Thiel, Sean Parker, Luke Nosek, and Ken Howery—with Polansky and another young principal at the time, Brian Singerman, sharing an office. "It was a really, really great experience," Polansky says. When Parker left Founders Fund after becoming liquid in his Facebook stock and wanted to build out his own family office, he brought Polansky with him. Polansky ran that office—handling Parker’s business, investment, and philanthropic interests, including helping stand up the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (where Polansky remains executive director) until COVID, when his life "moved in a different direction." That change had a lot to do with Germanotta. Polansky met her in late 2019 at one of Parker’s birthday parties. Charmingly, the meeting came at the urging of her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, president of the Born This Way Foundation, whom Polansky had come to know through his philanthropic work. "She had said, you know, for months and months, ‘I want to set you up with my daughter,’" Polansky recalls. "I was like, I think you’re making fun of me." She wasn’t. When their own mothers later met, he says, laughing, "it all made perfect sense." (His mother and Germanotta’s mother are now close friends.) Their relationship is a full partnership, professionally and personally. Notably, for Gaga’s most recent world tour, which began in July of last year and ended in April, the couple managed a massive operation across three 747s, something Polansky compares to running "a 200-person startup that travels around the world every day." The tour’s scale was staggering, yet Polansky’s focus has increasingly turned to the lab. At Outer Biosciences, the mission is to train AI models on living human skin—tissue that remains metabolically active and structurally intact for weeks in their proprietary culture system. The goal, he explains, is to develop a platform that can predict how skin responds to drugs, cosmetics, and environmental stressors with far greater accuracy than current models, which rely on animal testing or static in vitro cultures. By keeping tissue alive and feeding continuous data to machine learning algorithms, the company hopes to usher in a new era of personalized dermatology and toxicology testing. For now, Outer Biosciences operates in stealth, but the implications are significant. If successful, the technology could dramatically reduce the need for animal testing and accelerate the development of safer, more effective skincare products. It also opens the door to patient-specific testing: a sample of your skin could be cultured and tested against potential treatments before you ever apply them. Polansky is quick to temper expectations, noting that the science is still evolving, but the early results are promising. Balancing his two worlds—one steeped in glamour and global tours, the other in petri dishes and algorithms—is a matter of discipline and passion. "I’m lucky," he admits. "I get to work on things that could change how we understand health, and I get to share my life with someone who inspires millions. It’s a lot, but it’s a good kind of a lot." As 2026 unfolds, Polansky’s dual life shows no sign of slowing. Outer Biosciences is expected to emerge from stealth later this year, and the company is already in talks with major pharmaceutical and cosmetic firms. Meanwhile, plans for Gaga’s next act—whether a new album or a return to Las Vegas—are quietly taking shape. For a man who once thought he’d spend his career in finance, the trajectory is nothing short of remarkable. But as he says, leaning back with a smile, "I’ve always believed in following the science and the music. They’re not so different—both require you to listen closely and act with precision." In an era where AI is transforming every industry, Polansky is betting that the most personal frontier—our own bodies—will yield the greatest insights. And he’s doing it with the same quiet intensity that once moved him to quit a hedge fund on a whim and fly west. For now, the world watches, and the skin isn’t just alive—it’s learning.

via TechCrunch