US government, Google and Meta join Zuckerberg-backed Biohub in $1.8bn push for AI biology

The US government and tech heavyweights Meta Platforms and Google parent Alphabet are joining nonprofit Biohub to build open datasets to train AI models for biological research, bringing total investment in the effort to $1.8 billion, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

Meta, Google DeepMind and drug-discovery startup Isomorphic Labs are jointly investing $300 million. The Department of Energy will invest more than $500 million over five years in laboratory measurement, modelling and computation, while the National Institutes of Health will coordinate datasets and repositories built with more than $500 million in earlier federal funding, which Biohub will standardise for AI training.

The commitments follow the $500 million that Biohub — a philanthropic venture of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr Priscilla Chan — put into the project in April.

The investments fund the Virtual Biology Initiative, which aims to measure how cells respond to changes across far more conditions than scientists have studied so far, and use that data to build predictive models that could compress drug-development timelines that currently take years. Chan said: “We have always held this as a community asset, not just for one group, so that it can build upon itself over time.”

The datasets will eventually be released publicly, but companies that fund them get a head start, Biohub’s head of science Alex Rives said. The government-funded work running in parallel will carry no such restrictions, and Biohub plans to approach pharmaceutical companies and philanthropies next.