A family story behind Aerial.

My daughter had a half sibling ten blocks away. We only learned it three months after our families had already met.

That moment made the gap obvious: donor-gamete relationships are not abstract records. They are nearby, searchable, and deeply human. Aerial exists to give families, donors, clinics, and cryobanks better infrastructure for that reality.

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Founder context

Aerial started from a real donor-sibling discovery: two households, one shared donor record, and no shared system for context, consent, or review.

The family story is included because the product problem starts where records meet real relationships.

The research below shows the broader shift: anonymity is less reliable, identity-release expectations are changing, and families need accountable records before discovery becomes a crisis.

How this happens.

The current system treats anonymity as an institutional promise. The new world turns relationship discovery into a distributed event: DNA databases, social networks, search, school, neighborhood, and everyday proximity all collide. The scale is no longer theoretical: Ancestry reports more than 25 million people in its DNA network, while 23andMe reports more than 15 million genotyped customers and says its DNA Relatives pipeline processes new customers against a database of over 15 million individuals.⁶⁷⁸

Family A

Recipient household

Child grows up with records, language, and disclosure choices managed inside one family system.

Child A

Genetic information enters a consumer DNA network.

Donor-gamete record

Intended privacy, contract language, medical records, donor profile, and outcome reporting may live in separate systems.

Outside discovery

DNA matching, social search, and local context create a half sibling signal before any institution has routed review.

Family B

Another household

A separate child, separate family story, and separate expectations can be connected by the same donor record.

Child B

The match arrives as relationship information, not just data.

Inspired by ASRM's unplanned-identification scenario: two children use direct-to-consumer DNA testing and are notified they are half siblings. The clinical point is larger than one test: anonymity is no longer reliable infrastructure.¹

The old record model cannot carry the new reality.

This is not just a disclosure problem. It is a records problem, a consent problem, a cost problem, and an accountability problem.

Private promise

Nonidentified donation can still begin with the intention that donor, recipient, and offspring identities remain unknown to one another.

Discovery pressure

DNA databases, social media, public records, and nearby family networks can expose relationships outside clinic-controlled workflows.

Unrouted match

Half siblings, donors, parents, and relatives can discover one another without shared context, consent history, or a review path.

Family burden

The hard work moves to Personal Networks: who knows, who should know, what is safe to share, and what the original records can actually prove.

The pressure is getting bigger.

We are collecting source-grade market signals before making hard numerical claims about the full donor-sperm market. The sourced picture is already clear: donor-sperm ART is growing, identity release expectations are changing, single and same-sex family building demand is visible in regulator data, and the cost of donor sperm makes every record and every vial matter.

5.6% -> 8.8%

U.S. donor-sperm ART cycles, 2014-2022

Donor sperm ART is still growing

A 2025 Fertility & Sterility abstract updating national donor-sperm ART trends found donor sperm use rose from 5.6% of ART cycles in 2014 to 8.8% in 2022.

11.9% -> 65%

U.S. sperm-bank donor mix, 2006-2024

Open-identity donors are now the majority

A U.S. sperm-bank analysis found open-identity sperm donors rose from 11.9% of donors in 2006 to 65% in 2024.

+83% / +45%

HFEA IVF patient growth, 2019-2023

⁴

Single and same-sex family building is rising

HFEA's 2023 UK data reported single IVF patients increased 83% and female same-sex IVF patients increased 45% from 2019 to 2023; single patients were also the largest DI patient group in 2023.

$2,397

Latest-release ID-disclosure vial price

⁵

The cost burden is visible

California Cryobank currently lists latest-release ID-disclosure donor sperm at $2,397 per vial and says national averages range from three to four insemination cycles per successful pregnancy.

Ten blocks is not a metaphor.

The shock was not only that the relationship existed. It was that two families could be that close, already connected in real life, and still have no shared context until after the fact.

Aerial is building for that reality: privacy-preserving accountability infrastructure where donor-gamete records are durable, consent is granular, risky patterns are visible, and families are not left to reconstruct the system alone.

Sources

Numbered markers link to the cited source. Founder story copy is first-party Aerial context; external claims are source-gated here.

8 sources