Passing the Baton to Win the Race

“The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.”

— Charles F. Kettering

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The Professional: A Founder’s Duty

When I think back to the earliest days of Recursion, it still feels a little bit like capturing lightning in a bottle. We were a tiny group in a converted closet/laboratory with secondhand microscopes, chasing a simple but radical question: what if we could teach machines to see biology differently?

We were animated by a constructive dissatisfaction with the status quo and a belief that we could decode biology to radically improve lives. For years, we preached the potential of our approach to a skeptical, and often hostile, audience.

Twelve years later, together with so many incredible employees and partners, that spark we captured in 2013 has grown into something extraordinary - a movement and a new sector. Together, we’ve built one of the world’s largest proprietary biological and chemical datasets. We’ve mapped the function of the genome in more than a dozen different kinds of living cells. We’ve built supercomputers, forged partnerships that once seemed impossible, earning over half a billion dollars in the process, taken multiple promising molecules into clinical trials and helped ignite a new generation of TechBio founders who are daring to reimagine drug discovery altogether.

Leading this team as co-founder and CEO has been the honor of my life. It has challenged and changed me — as a scientist, a leader, and a human being. To will something into existence from nothing requires a specific kind of relentless, perhaps even obsessive, energy. I’ve done my best to learn and grow as fast as possible, and to become the leader the company needed at every stage, from a 3-person startup out of graduate school to a global, public, clinical-stage TechBio leader.

Through the long nights, the failures and breakthroughs, the doubt and belief, I’ve learned that building something truly new requires more than intelligence or capital; it requires heart, humility, and the willingness to keep showing up when the outcome is still uncertain. Leading alongside so many incredible teammates, motivated and dedicated to accomplishing our mission, has made it an extraordinary and fulfilling journey.

An important and often underappreciated duty of a founding CEO is to know when to pass the baton–avoiding the temptation to hold it too long or drop it entirely. We should pass it, intentionally and gracefully, to the person best equipped to carry it forward and then support them and the company fiercely. For me, that time is now; the era of "if" is over and we are now in the era of "when" and "how".

January 1st, I’ll be transitioning from Co-Founder and CEO to Co-Founder and Board Chair of Recursion. Najat Khan, our Chief R&D and Commercial Officer, will become our next CEO — I have had the distinct privilege of recruiting and now working alongside and partnering with Najat for the last 18 months. I have seen her brilliance and I could not imagine a more capable or inspiring leader to carry the mission forward. Najat’s vision, intellect, courage and deep care, coupled with extraordinary organizational intuition and strong capacity to manage complex processes, are exactly what this next chapter requires.

She is, without a doubt, the best person to lead Recursion into this next phase. Her technical and strategic skills are exactly what the mission needs, and I have absolute faith in her. She will leave no stone unturned, motivate and inspire our incredible team and give this company every chance to achieve what so few believed we could

This transition is not an ending, but an evolution — for me, for Najat and for Recursion. I will remain deeply engaged in our mission and culture as Board Chair. In my new role, I will be dedicating myself to Najat and Recursion’s success, and serving as a protector of the mission and vision on our Board. I’ll also be serving as Executive Advisor at Najat’s direction, where I’ll have the honor of continuing to work on the things I love most: our frontier research, developing our senior leaders, and more. I get to transition from the "day-to-day" to the "next-decade."

The Personal: Refocusing the Aperture

This journey of building Recursion over the last twelve years has been the privilege of my life. But the truth, which any founder knows, is that building something like this demands a cost.

For twelve years, Recursion has been my primary focus. That dedication has been necessary, but it has not been free. It has come at the expense of time with my family—the people who believed in me, who bet alongside me, and who allowed me to go on this voyage. It has also made balancing other aspects of life, like health and friendships, more complex. 

I’ve looked at the next 10 years and realized that to sustain my commitment to Recursion's long-term mission, I must rebalance. I need to give back to the people I care most about personally. I’m excited to be more present as a father and a husband. I want to be ready to rebuild other relationships that have lapsed.

We often glorify the "hustle," and the 24/7 grind of building. And I will not stand here and argue that it isn’t necessary to achieve something important - I believe it is. But delivering a mission like ours is a multi-decade marathon, and while I was able to maintain the pace needed for the company for twelve years, in order to be a core part of the next decade, I need to build a more sustainable next chapter. This transition is my way of ensuring I can remain a dedicated steward of our mission for decades to come, while also honoring the people outside of Recursion I care most deeply about.

Make no mistake - my commitment and belief in Recursion is unwavering.

‍To all who have made our progress possible: Thank You

While Recursion is just getting started and I will be able to continue to work with all of our stakeholders in my new role, I do want to pause for a moment and extend my gratitude and thanks to the people who have been on this journey with us over the last twelve years. 

• First, to my co-founders Dean and Blake, who believed before anyone else that we could build something meaningful and who have supported this company and me so deeply over more than a decade, Thank You. 
• To the more than 1,000 employees and contractors, both current and former, who have dedicated themselves to constructive dissatisfaction with the status quo and who have taken the risk to try to do things differently, Thank You. 
• To our Board members, current and past, and especially to our former Chair, R. Martin Chavez and our current Chair Rob Hershberg, who have been incredible stewards of the company and mentors to me, and who have taken personal risk to back a company ruffling feathers by doing things differently in a conservative industry, Thank You. 
• To our shareholders, both long-standing and new, who believe alongside us that it is worth betting on a better future in an industry with so much positive impact to deliver, Thank You. 
• To all the incredible colleagues who have advised the company, from outside counsel, to scientific advisors to our trusted banking colleagues and beyond, Thank You.
• To our partners, who also believe there may be a new and better way to discover medicines and have worked with us to build a future together, Thank You. 
• To the patients who inspire all of us to work tirelessly to do all we can to make this industry deliver even more life-changing impact, Thank You. 
• To my family, who have allowed me to go on this voyage and who have bet alongside me that all of this work and absence would be worth it by the impact we could have, Thank You.

And finally, to Najat and the incredible team at Recursion today - you’ve got this, and I will be standing ready to support you and the company every step of the way, through the highs and lows of building something new and different, so that together we can achieve lasting, positive impact.

We are just getting started. Let's get to it.

-Chris

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