Biohub, Co-Founded by Priscilla Chan, Expands Virtual-Cell Push to $1.8B with DOE, NIH, Google and Meta
Biohub, the research organization co-founded by pediatrician Priscilla Chan and her husband Mark Zuckerberg, is expanding its Virtual Biology Initiative to $1.8 billion in total commitments, Reuters reported October 7. The goal is to build open datasets for SI "virtual cells" that can predict how cells behave. The U.S. Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, Meta, Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs have all joined the effort.
The $1.8 billion is not all new cash: Biohub committed $500 million in April; the Energy Department will contribute more than $500 million over five years; NIH is coordinating datasets built with more than $500 million in prior federal funding; and the three tech companies are contributing $300 million together. Funders get one year of early access before the data opens to the public.
"Biology has been just sort of a clever discovery-based science until this point," Chan said in an interview. "We have always held this as a community asset." Founded in 2016 and based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Biohub applies engineering and data methods to understanding disease. (GSM, based on Reuters reporting)
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：Biohub共同创办人陈嘉韵（2025年资料照片）。图片来源：Wikimedia Commons（CC BY-SA 4.0）。Photo: Priscilla Chan, co-founder of Biohub (2025 file photo). Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
