Biohub, a scientific organization supported by Mark Zuckerberg, announced a partnership with the U.S. government, Google and other institutions to invest $1.8 billion in artificial intelligence (IA) models that predict disease and treatment effects.
© Shutterstock
08/10/2026
by
Lusa
O project, called the Virtual Biology Initiative, seeks to create a kind of “virtual cell” that allows researchers to conduct experiments digitally and anticipate which interventions can be most effective, before testing them in laboratory, according to a statement from Biohub.
The goal is to “accelerate disease research and the development of new medicines,” the same source was detailed.
Biohub, which coordinates the initiative, will work with the American National Health Institutes (NIH) to gather and standardize large volumes of biological data that can be used to train these models.
The organization will also develop technologies to measure and interpret cell behavior on a much larger scale than currently available.
The Department of Energy will provide over 500 million dollars over five years for research, measurement and computing, while NIH will incorporate biomedical data sets developed with over 500 million dollars of previous federal investment.
Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs and Meta will jointly contribute another $300 million.
The creators expect these tools to identify possible promising treatments and experiments before taking them to the laboratory.
The announcement appears eight days after Zuckerberg participated, along with other important technological executives — including representatives of Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft and Tesla — in a lunch with Trump and other government officials in the White House to discuss the development and safeguards of the AI.
At the meeting, businessmen agreed on voluntary security principles for the AI, and President Donald Trump defended self-regulation of the sector.