After a Family Health Crisis, Bill Ackman Bets $400M on Brain Science
In February, Bill Ackman got a middle-of-the-night call from his oldest daughter: she had walked into her sister’s Brooklyn apartment and found her collapsed on the floor. First responders did not know what was wrong.
It was a massive brain hemorrhage—the result of a congenital weakness no one knew she had. She survived, but only after spending weeks in a coma, and she is still relearning how to walk and speak.
“She has got a long way to go, but we make progress almost every day,” Ackman said on Tuesday (Sept. 15) during an onstage interview at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York. The ordeal led the billionaire hedge fund manager to put $400 million into launching the Ackman Oxman Institute, focused on brain research, rehabilitation, human optimization and longevity.
Ackman described the healthcare industry as “fundamentally broken” and blamed non-profit hospital networks. “The solution is a complete reboot,” he said.
Ackman said he could “not be more effusively positive about the nurses, the doctors” who treated his daughter. Still, he argued that providers’ efforts to treat patients were hindered by reimbursement issues. He plans to run his new institute like the startup accelerator Y Combinator, funding quick breakthroughs in patient care and rehab equipment.
“The benefit of having independent financing coming from one source is that we can make decisions like a startup,” said Ackman, who recently rolled out a fund to give retail investors access to pre-IPO companies. “Imagine a startup where you have got one big investor. You’re not worried about having to raise money; you can focus on recruiting the best people.”
He has already spent $191 million on a vacant 400,000 square-foot biotech facility on New York’s Upper West Side to house the project, and he is under contract to buy an adjoining site that has been used by Saturday Night Live for rehearsals. That one, he plans to demolish.
“They’ll probably do an episode about me when we tear down the building,” he half-joked.
Even though Ackman described New York as “a really good place” to “redefine healthcare,” he didn’t hold back on City Hall.
“We need to design incentives— tax and otherwise — in a way that promotes business development,” Ackman said. “The mayor has scared away or encouraged people who are among the most productive New Yorkers to go to other places like Miami, and that’s just not helpful.”
But he isn’t packing up any time soon.
“It’s easier to recruit the best people in brain science to New York City than almost any other city,” he said.
Ackman, who backed President Donald Trump in 2024, defended the President’s foreign policy record while disagreeing with some of his recent moves. He said he dislikes Trump’s crypto projects and balked at his announcement that he would provide all Americans with a $5,000 dividend if Republicans win the midterms.
“Not his greatest sort of moment,” Ackman said. “Every President is flawed in varying ways, and let’s leave it there.”
