Venture capital firm 8VC, spearheaded by billionaire Joe Lonsdale, has channeled significant funding into an animal testing startup created by the former chief operating officer of a corporation penalized with the largest fine in American history for breaching the Animal Welfare Act.

Safer Human Medicine (SHM), established in 2023 by industry veteran Jim Harkness, is working toward breeding approximately 30,000 primates dedicated to medical investigation. The enterprise has successfully accumulated $28 million in funding to date, out of which Lonsdale’s 8VC contributed a substantial $20 million back in 2023, according to multiple insiders close to the transaction.

Controversy and Public Defense

Although 8VC omits SHM from the portfolio section of its official website, Lonsdale openly acknowledged his financial stake during an appearance on Jack Altman’s podcast last May. Defending the initiative, Lonsdale posed a stark philosophical question on the show: "Would you rather save your sibling or the monkey? It’s not evil… it’s pro-human." Recently, 8VC mentioned the startup publicly for the first time via social media, prompting Lonsdale to respond using monkey and U.S. flag emojis.

Before launching SHM, founder Harkness spent a three-year tenure as COO at research animal supplier Envigo. His departure occurred in October 2022, shortly after the company agreed to shutter its beagle-breeding facility located in Cumberland, Virginia. The U.S. Department of Justice had previously initiated a complaint citing substandard veterinary care, filthy environments, malnutrition, and alarmingly high puppy mortality rates at the site. Authorities ultimately seized over 4,000 beagles, which were subsequently made available for public adoption.

Two years later, Envigo's parent entity, Inotiv, formally entered a guilty plea, disbursed a record-shattering $35 million in financial penalties alongside related settlements, and confirmed the permanent closure of the Virginia beagle facility as of September 2022.

While Harkness faced no criminal charges, he declined to issue public statements regarding the matter. Similarly, Lonsdale opted not to reply to inquiries concerning Harkness’s corporate history.

The Georgia Facility Battle

Following his exit from Envigo, Harkness began shopping around a business plan centered on primate research. After evaluating more than a dozen potential sites, he selected Bainbridge, Georgia, a tight-knit community of approximately 15,000 residents situated near the Florida border. By December 2023, local leaders greenlit an ambitious incentive package featuring up to $300 million in bonds, roughly 200 acres of land, and a decade-long property tax exemption. In exchange, SHM pledged a $70 million infusion into the regional economy alongside the creation of roughly 263 jobs. Promotional materials distributed to Bainbridge citizens in 2024 even featured architectural renderings of indoor play spaces equipped with toys, trees, and expansive windows for the primates.

However, the agreement quickly unraveled as local activists mobilized against the proposed mega-facility, drawing support from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). By February 2024, the county development authority reversed course and voted to withdraw from the arrangement, prompting SHM to launch a federal lawsuit in Georgia alleging that the development authority breached a legally binding contract.

The legal battle remains active. SHM has not yet taken ownership of the property, and the Bainbridge installation is completely non-operational. The company declined to comment regarding the ongoing litigation or the development status of the Bainbridge site.

In response to the roadblock, the organization pivoted toward alternative locations. Early in 2025, SHM disclosed the acquisition of an established facility in LaBelle, Florida, designed to accelerate holding and quarantine operations while backing the delayed Bainbridge project. Having poured millions into the Florida site, the location has already secured clients and is fully functional.

“America needs a reliable domestic supply of research primates to help rapidly advance cures for our kids,” Lonsdale, 44, stated. “We should pursue effective alternatives wherever possible and insist on rigorous ethical standards of animal care only truly possible on domestic or allied soil where oversight for the humane treatment of animals is enshrined in law.”

The Biotech Primate Shortage

Lonsdale, whose net worth is estimated at $3.8 billion, co-founded defense tech titan Palantir alongside Peter Thiel and Alex Karp before launching 8VC in 2015. Operating under the banner of repairing a fractured society, 8VC manages $13 billion in assets and counts enterprises like Anduril, Cognition, and Quince among its investments. In 2018, Lonsdale also co-established the Cicero Institute, a conservative think tank promoting free-market policies across housing and healthcare sectors.

For generations, animal testing was a statutory requirement for all pharmaceutical drugs. In 2023, the FDA altered course by relaxing the mandate, empowering drugmakers to substitute living subjects with advanced technologies such as computer simulations and organs-on-chips capable of replicating human physiological responses. While animal rights groups celebrated the shift, pharmaceutical firms continue to rely heavily on animal populations for complex drug discovery.

“You need to be able to make assessments in an integrated physiological system that most closely resembles the human condition,” says Kenneth Ramos, a professor of medical sciences at Texas A&M. “Cutting corners on safety and efficacy assessments is never going to be a good thing to do for society.”

“We refer to primates as the rare earth minerals of biotech because it’s really become constrained and creating major challenges for U.S. researchers to get their work done,” notes SHM’s Harkness.

“Leadership means having the courage to support research that can save lives even when it sounds controversial,” says Joe Lonsdale.

Because non-human primates share over 90% of their genetic makeup with humans and enjoy longer lifespans than rodents, they remain indispensable for evaluating advanced therapies. These animals have played vital roles in creating COVID-19 vaccines, gene therapies, and treatments for metabolic disorders.

During the peak of the global pandemic in 2020, China—historically the origin of 60% of research monkeys imported to the U.S.—enacted a strict export prohibition on non-human primates. Laboratories worldwide scrambled to source alternatives in Cambodia as soaring demand inflated market rates from roughly $3,000 to as high as $20,000 per animal. Subsequently, a 2022 federal indictment targeting an illicit monkey-smuggling ring in Cambodia choked off that supply chain as well. Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that roughly 80% of long-tailed macaques imported into the U.S. now originate from Mauritius and Vietnam, while China's export ban remains firmly enforced.

Lonsdale is far from the only tech billionaire wading into controversial animal-testing ventures. Elon Musk co-founded neural interface startup Neuralink, which faced intense regulatory scrutiny regarding its handling of primates. Concurrently, billionaire Ben Lamm of Colossal Biosciences recently partnered with Palmer Luckey’s Anduril to launch Warhound, an initiative aiming to engineer a new breed of military working dogs for the U.S. armed forces, drawing sharp condemnation from animal advocacy groups.

Unfazed by public pushback, Lonsdale remains steadfast in his commitment to controversial life sciences investments.