Google invests millions in Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to create a ‘virtual cell’

Google DeepMind, Meta, and AI drug discovery startup Isomorphic Labs are jointly investing $300 million into Biohub, the nonprofit biomedical research organization founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, as reported by Reuters. The funding is part of a $1.8 billion initiative to build AI datasets that could allow researchers to “ask, predict, and answer biological questions digitally,” helping find new ways to prevent and manage diseases.

“An accurate predictive model of biology could dramatically accelerate scientific discovery by enabling scientists to perform experiments digitally,” Alex Rives, Biohub’s head of science, says in the press release. “The creation of a virtual cell is one of the most important challenges for the next era of science. It will require coordinated data generation efforts at a national and international scale, which is why these partners are coming together.”