Google invests millions in Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to create a ‘virtual cell’ — SkimNews
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- Google DeepMind, Meta, and Isomorphic Labs are jointly investing $300 million into Biohub's "Virtual Biology" initiative, which aims to create a "virtual cell" researchers can use to combat disease.
- The private investment is part of a broader $1.8 billion initiative to build AI datasets that let researchers "ask, predict, and answer biological questions digitally," according to Biohub.
- Biohub, a nonprofit founded in 2016 by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, aims to build a "high-accuracy predictive model of the cell" that enables simulations to help prevent and cure diseases.
- The US Department of Energy will invest more than $500 million over the next five years, while the National Institutes of Health will contribute datasets, repositories, and knowledge bases stemming from over $500 million in prior federal investment.
- Alex Rives, Biohub's head of science, called creating a virtual cell "one of the most important challenges for the next era of science," saying it will require "coordinated data generation efforts at a national and international scale."
Why it matters: The $300 million from Google DeepMind, Meta, and Isomorphic Labs is a fraction of the $1.8 billion total initiative, with the DOE alone pledging $500 million over five years and NIH contributing datasets built from $500 million-plus in prior federal spending — meaning US taxpayers are the single largest financial backer of this push to simulate cellular biology computationally rather than in wet labs.
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