The company, formed in 1996 through a partnership between Colorado State University and Cytomation Inc., developed the technology that brought Call Me Madame into the world on Aug. 6, 1998, as the first horse born with a pre-determined sex.

A year and another technological advance later, the company brought four more sex-selected foals into the world.

Now, 10 more mares are pregnant. The company continues to perfect the technique in cattle. Jacobson - XY's president and chief executive officer -is exploring the potential in pigs and endangered species. And last month, the company issued its first commercial license for use in cattle.

"The XY business is really becoming global," Jacobson said during a phone interview from his native country. The company's seven-member board now includes members from England, Belgium and Switzerland.

The key to sex selection, Jacobson said, is sorting sperm into those carrying the X-chromosome, which could yield female offspring, and those carrying the Y-chromosome, which could yield male offspring.

Being able to choose the sex of the offspring would save cattle ranchers and horse breeders millions of dollars and prevent the abuse and slaughter of countless animals born "the wrong sex," he said.

The challenge has been finding a way to inseminate the mothers with the low number of sperm achieved through sorting: Traditional means of artificial insemination require some 20 million sperm in cows, 500 million in horses and 3 billion in pigs.

With Call Me Madame, researchers surgically inserted 150,000 sperm directly into the mother's reproductive track, giving fertilization every opportunity to occur.

"The sperm didn't have to swim anywhere," Jacobson said. "It's interesting scientifically, and it's an interesting achievement, but surgical insemination is not what the market wants."

The four foals born last summer were conceived using nonsurgical artificial insemination - and only 25 million sorted sperm each. The 10 pregnant mares received only 5 million sperm each, and in some cases, the sperm had also been frozen and thawed.

"We're trying to see how far we can push down the number of sperm you need," Jacobson said. XY's work is further along in cattle, which saw the first successful sex selection in 1995, thanks to the work of George Seidel, a physiology professor with CSU's College of Veterinary Medicine. "It only takes one sperm to fertilize an egg so I asked, 'Why do we need to put in tens of millions?'" said Seidel, who tweaked sperm preparation, timing and placement to make the technique work.

Now, Seidel - who owns and operates a cattle ranch north of Fort Collins - gets daily inquiries about the procedure and when it might be available commercially.

It would have come in handy for him a few years ago, he said, citing a time when he bought 15 pure-bred embryos, hoping for female offspring to enlarge his herd: He implanted all 15 embryos but got only two female calves.

The newest research focus for XY is endangered species.

"When a species is endangered, you need more females," Jacobson said. "The more females you have, the more you can get the numbers back up."

Besides ongoing work with gorillas at zoos in both Sydney and Omaha, Neb., XY has had requests to apply the technique with recovery efforts for Mohar gazelles, Siberian tigers, South American tapirs and African elephants.

"We're putting aside part of our budget towards doing something positive for the planet," Jacobson said.

Besides the search for new scientific collaborators, the budget is a big part of Jacobson's latest international tour.

In the previous two rounds of fund-raising, XY raised $4 million toward the estimated $10 million needed to bring a product to market. Jacobson said he has now raised $4.2 million of the remaining $6 million.

Lead investors to date include Bovine Technology in Australia and Cogent, a membership-based breeding program, in England.

"What we're doing now is fine-tuning the technology," Jacobson said. "What's next is to start going commercial."

But XY isn't rushing the process.

"It is part of our plan that our company shall have a policy of being careful and responsible in what we release," Jacobson said.

Last month, the company signed its first commercial license, allowing use of the technology in cattle, with commercial sales expected to start this year.

"By next year," Jacobson said, "we'll be out-licensing to other centers of excellence in the United States and around the world."