Mark Zuckerberg’s nonprofit Biohub aims to prevent and cure diseases through virtual cells; gets millions from Google and US government; AI datasets may allow researchers to ‘ask, predict, and answer biological questions digitally’

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s nonprofit Biohub has brought Google, Meta and the US government into its plan to build a “virtual cell”. A virtual cell is an AI model of human biology that can predict how cells behave, fall sick and respond to treatment. With the new commitments, total funding for the effort has reached $1.8 billion. Biohub says this is the largest coordinated investment in AI-ready biological data so far.

Google DeepMind, Meta and Alphabet-owned drug discovery startup Isomorphic Labs are jointly putting in $300 million.