What's happening
Biohub, the research organization backed by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, is coordinating a $1.8 billion initiative to build AI models that can predict cell behavior. The goal is to create foundation models that speed up experiments in biology.
Who is involved
Meta, Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs and the US Department of Energy are taking part. Their contributions come in the form of data, lab equipment and compute.
Timeline
According to the announcement, a first dataset should be ready in about a year. That will serve as a starting point for training models that predict cell behavior.
Why it matters
Models that can predict cell behavior could accelerate everything from drug discovery to basic biology research. Big tech companies investing directly in biology expands the role of AI in scientific research.
