Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Pivots to AI-Driven Disease Research with $10 Billion Commitment

AI drives dramatic expansion of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's funding to end all diseases

As the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) captivates biomedicine, few people are riding the wave like Priscilla Chan -- because few people have her resources. Trained as a pediatrician, Chan and her husband, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, co-run a philanthropy that launched in 2015 with the wildly ambitious -- some would say quixotic -- goal of curing, preventing, or managing every disease by the end of the century. The couple pledged nearly their entire fortune -- $45 billion then and more than $200 billion today -- to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), which would also support their education and progressive causes. Recently, however, the foundation has wound down support for almost everything but science. And this week, CZI announced it is increasing its research spending, doubling down on AI, and vowing to meet Chan and Zuckerberg's biomedical goal even earlier -- although CZI won't set a specific target. "As I get older, the faster I personally want it to be," says Chan, 40, sitting in her modest office at CZI's headquarters in Redwood City, California. "It really feels like we're at a moment where there's a lot that can be done to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery." As the CEO of Meta -- which includes Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp -- Zuckerberg owns nearly 15% of the company, and his wealth can shift by tens of billions in a day with the fluctuations in his stock holdings. But the couple's plan to donate 99% of their Meta shares to CZI means its wealth could eclipse that of established titans of biomedical philanthropy, including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and foundations run by Gates, Wellcome, and Novo Nordisk (see table, below). "It's fantastic," says Robert Tjian, a biochemist at the University of California (UC), Berkeley who once led HHMI and has been a scientific adviser to CZI. "There are a lot of other very, very wealthy individuals that are not doing it." CZI now says it will spend at least $10 billion on basic scientific research over the next decade, more than twice the $4 billion it spent in its first decade, and on par with the annual spending of HHMI. Abundant optimism about marrying AI and biology has also led CZI to drop the softer "managing disease" part of its mission, and Chan says if the couple sees further opportunities to fulfill the cure and prevention vision, they'll cash in more stocks. "We're ready to spend," she says. One new project already benefiting from their generosity -- and spelled out in a preprint this week -- is a major AI effort to build a virtual version of the human immune system that could speed the hunt for new therapies. In another sign of its bet on AI, CZI this week announced its new head of science will be a computer scientist, Alex Rives of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, who has developed large language models for biology and was a former AI researcher at Facebook. In CZI's first decade it invested $3.5 billion on social advocacy, education, and politics. But according to an open letter sent to employees in February from the chief operating officer, CZI over the past few years shifted away from those issues to "align with our focus as a science philanthropy" and because of "the current legal and policy landscape." The letter also noted that CZI was cutting its own diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility team. These moves have drawn sharp criticism from some former CZI employees and jilted grantees. And scientists inside and outside of CZI were taken aback by Zuckerberg's recent effort to curry favor with President Donald Trump through a $1 million donation from Meta to his inaugural celebration. Matthew Porteus, a pediatrician at Stanford University, questions Zuckerberg's support for a president who wants to reduce the National Institutes of Health budget by 37%. "There's an inconsistency between what the CZI is doing and what is going on at the federal government level," says Porteus, who previously received funding from the philanthropy. Cori Bargmann, a cell biologist at Rockefeller University who was CZI's head of science for its first 6 years and remains an adviser, says she knew when she came on board that Zuckerberg had to wear two hats. "It's a lot easier to do philanthropy when you're not trying to run a major business at the same time, especially one that has large-scale implications in terms of the political process and how it interacts with it and the legal system," Bargmann says. She recounts that when she took the CZI job in 2016, HHMI head Erin O'Shea offered a warning. "She said, 'I just want you to know that my job is easier than your job, because Howard Hughes is dead.'" Chan says she focuses on what she can control. "I have the ability to influence and be a steady funder and to show up for our scientists ... and move science forward." In its first decade, CZI funded more than 250 university investigators like Porteus, issued 2000 grants, and trained scientists in dozens of countries. It also hired more than 150 full-time scientists and other staff for "biohubs" in San Francisco, New York City, and Chicago, bringing together diverse specialties that traditionally didn't collaborate much. An imaging institute in Redwood City that will receive $600 million over 10 years develops state-of-the-art microscopes and software to help the biohub network clarify the workings of cells. Undergirding all of these efforts is an open science ethos that allows outside scientists to adopt and modify CZI software and algorithms. Among the projects CZI supported is an international effort called the Human Cell Atlas, dubbed the Google map of the body, that attempts to chart all cell types across the human life span. A consortium led by Stanford biophysicist Steve Quake at the San Francisco biohub created another atlas cataloging more than 1 million cells from 28 human organs and charting how they interact with each other, and a project led by biochemist Joe DeRisi of UC San Francisco taught researchers in low- and middle-income countries to detect and track infectious diseases. CZI in 2019 began to fund a network of patient-led organizations that focus on rare diseases. In July, it announced its first investment in a treatment-related project: $20 mill- ion over 3 years to UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley to test personalized CRISPR treatments for eight children with severe genetic immune diseases. The goal is to extend the gene-editing success reported earlier this year for "Baby KJ," who had a rare metabolic disease. "They've accomplished a lot, but it's still early in many ways," Tjian says. "They're taking on a really powerful challenge and trying many things." CZI is rebranding its three original labs and the imaging center as Biohub, a single entity that Rives will oversee and a reflection of its plan to have everyone share data to create the virtual immune system. Staff at the San Francisco biohub and CZI's imaging institute will also all move to a massive new building in Redwood City in 2027. "It's an opportunity to bring people together that normally would have a hard time talking or interacting," says immunologist Matthias Haury, chief operating officer of that biohub and the imaging institute. A chunk of increased investment will go toward a 10-fold boost over the next 3 years in computing power for Biohub investigators. Further supporting the effort to make a virtual immune system, biophysicist Andrea Califano leads a group at the New York City biohub that genetically modifies immune cells to explore how they move from one state of activity to another or migrate to sites around the body. By the end of next year, the group aims to perturb about 100 million single cells and record the changes. "We want to start creating mechanisms that allow us to study the immune system as a system," Califano says. The Chicago biohub is pumping massive amounts of data into the project as well, by probing inflammation in organ-mimicking, lab-grown blobs of tissues known as organoids. The group develops sensors -- described in a Science paper last year -- that every hour sample organoids for protein and metabolic changes that cause psoriasis and inflammatory bowel diseases. Veteran immunologist Jeffrey Bluestone, who now heads Sonoma Biotherapeutics, remains skeptical that CZI's virtual immune system will be the key to curing and preventing all diseases. "It ain't going to work," he says. But he says the project could still be "transformational" for immunology, answering questions such as which cells are affected by a flu virus infection and ways to improve the vaccine for the pathogen. Chan says if AI delivers on its promise and reveals pathways to make novel medicines, CZI may tilt more toward clinical research. She and Zuckerberg are now parents of three daughters, the oldest born the year CZI launched. "It feels more urgent" to push CZI toward its ambitious goals, Chan says. "People need hope. I want to believe that impossible things are possible."

Zuckerberg, Chan shift bulk of philanthropy to science, focusing on AI and biology to curb disease

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) -- For the past decade, Dr. Priscilla Chan and her husband Mark Zuckerberg have focused part of their philanthropy on a lofty goal -- "to cure, prevent or manage all disease" -- if not in their lifetime, then in their children's. But during that time, they also funded underprivileged schools, immigration reform and efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion. Now, the billionaire couple is shifting the bulk of their philanthropic resources to Biohub, the pair's science organization, and focusing on using artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery. The idea is to develop virtual, AI-based cell models to understand how they work in the human body, study inflammation and use AI to "harness the immune system" for disease detection, prevention and treatment. "I feel like the science work that we've done, the Biohub model in particular, has been the most impactful thing that we have done. So we want to really double down on that. Biohub is going to be the main focus of our philanthropy going forward," Zuckerberg said Wednesday evening at an event at the Biohub Imaging Institute in Redwood City, California. Three other Biohub institutes -- in New York, San Francisco and Chicago, focus on addressing different scientific challenges. Chan and Zuckerberg have pledged 99% of their lifetime wealth -- from shares of Meta Platforms, where Zuckerberg is CEO -- toward these efforts. Since 2016, when Biohub launched, they have donated $4 billion to basic science research, a figure that does not include operating expenses for running a large-scale computer cluster for life science research. The organization says it is now on track to double that amount over the next decade, with an operating budget of about $1 billion a year. Last week, singer Billie Eilish told an audience that included Chan and Zuckerberg that rich people should do more to address the world's problems. "Love you all, but there's a few people in here who have a lot more money than me," she said, to a smattering of applause. "And if you're a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? And no hate, but give your money away, shorties." The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple's charitable organization, has been faced with criticism recently for curtailing its other philanthropic work. Earlier this year, it stopped funding grants related to diversity, equity and inclusion, immigration advocacy and other issues currently in the crosshairs of the Trump administration -- though the focus has been shifting to science and away from social issues for years, the couple says, long before the 2024 election. "So we basically looked at the ecosystem of science funding and decided that the place that we can make the biggest impact was on tool development," Zuckerberg said. "And specifically working on long-term projects, 10 to 15 years, where the output of them was taking on a biological challenge that would produce a tool that scientists everywhere could use to accelerate the pace of science." The organization earlier this year scrubbed its website's mentions of DEI, including a statement saying "People of color and marginalized communities have experienced a long history of exploitation in the name of scientific research, and indeed science has itself been deployed as a tool of oppression." "Going forward, Biohub will be our primary philanthropic effort and where we'll dedicate the vast majority of our resources," Zuckerberg and Chan said in a blog post Thursday. "We will continue our other philanthropic efforts as well, but the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will serve as infrastructure and support for our initiatives." Zuckerberg and Chan's increased commitment to science research comes as the Trump administration has cut billions in scientific research and public health funding. Chan, who had worked as a pediatrician and treated children with rare diseases, says what she wanted "more than anything was a way to see what was happening inside their cells -- how genetic mutations were expressed in different cell types and what, exactly, was breaking down." "Until now, that kind of understanding has been out of reach. AI is changing that. For the first time, we have the potential to model and predict the biology of disease in ways that can reveal what's gone wrong and how we can develop new treatments to address it," she said. On Thursday, Chan and Zuckerberg also announced that Biohub is acquiring EvolutionaryScale, an AI research lab that has created large-scale AI systems for the life sciences. Alex Rives, EvolutionaryScale's co-founder, will serve as Biohub's head of science, leading research efforts on experimental biology, data and artificial intelligence. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Biohub's ambition for the next years and decades is to create virtual cell systems that would not have been possible without recent advances in AI. Similar to how large language models learn from vast databases of digital books, online writings and other media, its researchers and scientists are working toward building virtual systems that serve as digital representations of human physiology on all levels, such as molecular, cellular or genome. As it is open source -- free and publicly available -- scientists can then conduct virtual experiments on a scale not possible in physical laboratories. Noting that Biohub launched when the couple had their first child, Chan listed off some of the organization's accomplishments, ranging from building the largest single-cell data set, contributing to one of the largest human cell maps, building sensors to measure inflammation in real-time in living cells and researching rare diseases. That work continues, with a focus on using AI to advance biomedical research. "And to anchor it back onto the impact on patients, you know, why do this?" Chan said. "It's like, why is a virtual cell important? We have cured diseases for mice and for flies and for zebrafish, many, many times. And that's great. But we want to make sure that we are actually using biology to push the forefront of medicine for people -- and that is so promising."

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan Restructure Their Philanthropy

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropy run by Meta's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, once pledged to fix American education, transform public policy and "cure all disease." But over the years, it narrowed its focus to science. On Thursday, the organization announced its first major restructuring to become even more of a science-focused philanthropy. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative said it would now concentrate on artificial intelligence and scientific research, led by a network of research centers called Biohub. It also acquired the team of an A.I. start-up, Evolutionary Scale, and named Alex Rives, the company's chief scientist, its new head of science. It declined to disclose how much it had paid for the team. In an interview on Wednesday at an event in Biohub's office in Redwood City, Calif., Mr. Zuckerberg said that he and Dr. Chan wanted to "focus on something that wasn't going to be undone every few years." The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's emphasis on science and A.I. had the potential for lasting, generational impact, he said. The restructuring is significant for one of the world's most visible philanthropies. Founded in 2015, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative had wide-ranging ambitions and committed over $7 billion in grants in the last decade. Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan pledged to give away almost all of their wealth through the organization, which would amount to $256 billion. But Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan's relationship with politics has changed over time, and the organization has stepped away from social justice and political efforts. After President Trump's inauguration in January, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative ended diversity-based recruiting and laid off or reassigned employees who ran its diversity initiatives. In April, a school for low-income students that Dr. Chan had founded announced that it was closing after losing its funding. In May, the organization ended nearly all of its giving to local housing nonprofits. Its focus on science and A.I. mirrors changes that Mr. Zuckerberg has made at Meta. The tech giant, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has gone all in on A.I. It has said it is spending at least $70 billion this year, largely to stay competitive in the A.I. race. At the event at Biohub's office on Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan pledged to increase the organization's computing power from data centers tenfold by 2028 to help with A.I.-powered biological research. Specific projects include a virtual cell mapping platform, a large language model that can perform biological reasoning and A.I. that analyzes genetic sequences to detect disease. Biohub's scientists aim to use A.I. to conduct virtual experiments at a larger scale and faster rate than currently possible in laboratory testing, the organization said. Steve Quake, the Chan Zuckerberg Institute's previous head of science, stepped down in September. Dr. Chan, 40, a pediatrician, has said the organization sees its best return on investment from science. The philanthropy has reduced the size of grants it has given to other areas like education and housing but said it would not end that giving entirely.

Zuckerberg, Chan bet AI can cure all disease

Why it matters: The couple behind the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), long known for funding education and housing, is now betting that AI can help scientists prevent, manage and cure disease faster. Driving the news: CZI announced it's unifying its scientific efforts under the name Biohub, with a focus on using AI to speed medical and biological research. * It's also folding in EvolutionaryScale, a previously independent frontier AI research lab and developer of AI systems for the life sciences. CZI purchased the operation but didn't disclose the financial terms. * Alex Rives, EvolutionaryScale's co-founder, will serve as head of science for CZI, and its 50 employees will join Biohub. The big picture: Chan and Zuckerberg hosted a gathering of about 50 leading AI researchers and tech execs to announce the news and to discuss how to bring leading-edge AI work to leading-edge biology in hopes of creating new tools for the research and medical community ranging from cell-level models to new kinds of microscopes. * Guests included former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer, former Meta AI researcher Joelle Pineau, investor Jim Breyer and computer scientist Aleksander Madry. * Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, who founded biology lab Arc Institute, joined the pair on stage to riff about the current state of the art and what could soon be possible. What they're saying: "When we started, our goal was to help scientists cure or prevent all diseases this century," Zuckerberg said. "With advances in AI, we now believe this may be possible much sooner." * "The Biohub model has been the most impactful thing that we've done. So we want to really double down on that," Zuckerberg said at the event. Between the lines: "We are intentionally not choosing [a specific disease] because we want to make every single scientist better, to take on more risk, to ask the most brave, curious questions so that they can find out what's true in biology," Chan said at the event last night. * It's a continuation of a lifelong pursuit for Chan, a former pediatrician at UC San Francisco. She traces her interest in the field back to sixth grade, when her grandfather dropped her off at school one morning but had died by the time she got home. * "I was like, 'What is going on,'" Chan recalled in a Wall Street Journal profile. "I need to understand. Science is going to explain this to me." Chan went on to teach herself the basics of oncology using a cancer biology textbook she found on Amazon. CZI's new focus targets AI-accelerated discovery and "virtual biology," creating digital models of cells and molecules to simulate life processes, the couple outlined in a letter. * "We believe that it will be possible in the next few years to create powerful AI systems that can reason about and represent biology to accelerate science," Chan and Zuckerberg wrote. Yes, but: The shift, which has been underway for the past several months, has not been without controversy, particularly among the communities that have benefited from CZI's earlier projects. * Chan opened a school in East Palo Alto, California, that offered free tuition, health care and counseling to students and their parents. * The school is slated to close at the end of the 2025-26 school year. The bottom line: The goal of curing all disease is a big one, but Zuckerberg and Chan think it's within reach and there's no sense not trying to achieve it.

Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan shift philanthropy focus to how AI can accelerate science | Fortune

Now, the billionaire couple is shifting the bulk of their philanthropic resources to Biohub, the pair's science organization, and focusing on using artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery. The idea is to develop virtual, AI-based cell models to understand how they work in the human body, study inflammation and use AI to "harness the immune system" for disease detection, prevention and treatment. "I feel like the science work that we've done, the Biohub model in particular, has been the most impactful thing that we have done. So we want to really double down on that. Biohub is going to be the main focus of our philanthropy going forward," Zuckerberg said Wednesday evening at an event at the Biohub Imaging Institute in Redwood City, California. Three other Biohub institutes -- in New York, San Francisco and Chicago, focus on addressing different scientific challenges. Chan and Zuckerberg have pledged 99% of their lifetime wealth -- from shares of Meta Platforms, where Zuckerberg is CEO -- toward these efforts. Since 2016, when Biohub launched, they have donated $4 billion to basic science research, a figure that does not include operating expenses for running a large-scale computer cluster for life science research. The organization says it is now on track to double that amount over the next decade, with an operating budget of about $1 billion a year. Last week, singer Billie Eilish told an audience that included Chan and Zuckerberg that rich people should do more to address the world's problems. "Love you all, but there's a few people in here who have a lot more money than me," she said, to a smattering of applause. "And if you're a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? And no hate, but give your money away, shorties." The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple's charitable organization, has been faced with criticism recently for curtailing its other philanthropic work. Earlier this year, it stopped funding grants related to diversity, equity and inclusion, immigration advocacy and other issues currently in the crosshairs of the Trump administration -- though the focus has been shifting to science and away from social issues for years, the couple says, long before the 2024 election. "So we basically looked at the ecosystem of science funding and decided that the place that we can make the biggest impact was on tool development," Zuckerberg said. "And specifically working on long-term projects, 10 to 15 years, where the output of them was taking on a biological challenge that would produce a tool that scientists everywhere could use to accelerate the pace of science." The organization earlier this year scrubbed its website's mentions of DEI, including a statement saying "People of color and marginalized communities have experienced a long history of exploitation in the name of scientific research, and indeed science has itself been deployed as a tool of oppression." "Going forward, Biohub will be our primary philanthropic effort and where we'll dedicate the vast majority of our resources," Zuckerberg and Chan said in a blog post Thursday. "We will continue our other philanthropic efforts as well, but the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will serve as infrastructure and support for our initiatives." Zuckerberg and Chan's increased commitment to science research comes as the Trump administration has cut billions in scientific research and public health funding. Chan, who had worked as a pediatrician and treated children with rare diseases, says what she wanted "more than anything was a way to see what was happening inside their cells -- how genetic mutations were expressed in different cell types and what, exactly, was breaking down." "Until now, that kind of understanding has been out of reach. AI is changing that. For the first time, we have the potential to model and predict the biology of disease in ways that can reveal what's gone wrong and how we can develop new treatments to address it," she said. On Thursday, Chan and Zuckerberg also announced that Biohub has hired the team at EvolutionaryScale, an AI research lab that has created large-scale AI systems for the life sciences. Alex Rives, EvolutionaryScale's co-founder, will serve as Biohub's head of science, leading research efforts on experimental biology, data and artificial intelligence. The financial terms were not disclosed. Biohub's ambition for the next years and decades is to create virtual cell systems that would not have been possible without recent advances in AI. Similar to how large language models learn from vast databases of digital books, online writings and other media, its researchers and scientists are working toward building virtual systems that serve as digital representations of human physiology on all levels, such as molecular, cellular or genome. As it is open source -- free and publicly available -- scientists can then conduct virtual experiments on a scale not possible in physical laboratories. Noting that Biohub launched when the couple had their first child, Chan listed off some of the organization's accomplishments, ranging from building the largest single-cell data set, contributing to one of the largest human cell maps, building sensors to measure inflammation in real-time in living cells and researching rare diseases. That work continues, with a focus on using AI to advance biomedical research. "And to anchor it back onto the impact on patients, you know, why do this?" Chan said. "It's like, why is a virtual cell important? We have cured diseases for mice and for flies and for zebrafish, many, many times. And that's great. But we want to make sure that we are actually using biology to push the forefront of medicine for people -- and that is so promising."

Zuckerbergs put AI at heart of pledge to cure diseases

San Francisco (United States) (AFP) - The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a nonprofit launched by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife aimed at curing all disease, on Thursday announced it was restructuring to focus its efforts on using artificial intelligence to achieve that goal. The philanthropic mission created in 2016 by the Meta co-founder and his spouse, Priscilla Chan, said that its scientific teams will now be centralized in an organization dubbed Biohub. "This is a pivotal moment in science, and the future of AI-powered scientific discovery is starting to come into view," Biohub said in a blog post. "We believe that it will be possible in the next few years to create powerful AI systems that can reason about and represent biology to accelerate science." Biohub envisions AI helping advance ways to detect, prevent and cure diseases, according to the post. The mission includes trying to model the human immune system, potentially opening a door to "engineering human health." "We believe we're on the cusp of a scientific revolution in biology -- as frontier artificial intelligence and virtual biology give scientists new tools to understand life at a fundamental level," Biohub said in the post. The first investment announced by the Zuckerbergs when the initiative debuted was for the creation of a Biohub in San Francisco where researchers, scientists and others could work to build tools to better study and understand diseases. Shortly after it was established, the initiative bought a Canadian startup which uses AI to quickly read and comprehend scientific papers and then provide insights to researchers. "Our multidisciplinary teams of scientists and engineers have built incredible technologies to observe, measure and program biology," Biohub said of its progress. Meta is among the big tech firms that have been pouring billions of dollars into data centers and more in a race to lead the field of AI.