Google DeepMind, Meta and Isomorphic Labs to Invest $300 Million in Biohub's 'Virtual Cell' Project
Three tech companies will jointly put $300 million into Biohub, the nonprofit founded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. The money is meant to fund AI datasets for digital modelling of biological processes.
Google DeepMind, Meta and the AI drug discovery startup Isomorphic Labs are jointly investing $300 million in Biohub, a nonprofit biomedical research organization founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Reuters reported the news.
The contribution is part of a $1.8 billion initiative to build AI datasets. These would let researchers ask biological questions, make predictions and find answers digitally, with the hope of finding new ways to prevent and manage diseases.
The virtual cell
Biohub was founded in 2016 and aims to fight disease by creating a "virtual cell" that researchers can use to run simulations.
US government bodies are also backing the effort. The Department of Energy will invest more than $500 million over the next five years. The National Institutes of Health will supply datasets, repositories and knowledge bases that came out of earlier federal investment totalling more than $500 million.
Scientific outlook
Alex Rives, Biohub's head of science, said in a press release that an accurate predictive model of biology could greatly speed up scientific discovery by allowing experiments to be done digitally. He described building a virtual cell as one of the most important challenges of the next era of science, saying it will require coordinated data generation at national and international scale, which is why the partners are joining forces.
