Google DeepMind, Meta and AI drug-discovery company Isomorphic Labs are jointly investing $300 million in Biohub’s effort to build a predictive “virtual cell.” The nonprofit research organization, founded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, wants scientists to test biological questions digitally before moving to laboratory experiments.
The funding is part of Biohub’s broader $1.8 billion Virtual Biology initiative. The US Department of Energy plans to contribute more than $500 million over five years, while the National Institutes of Health will provide datasets, repositories and knowledge bases created through over $500 million in prior federal investment.
Biohub says the project will create AI-ready datasets and a high-accuracy model of cell behavior. If successful, researchers could use simulations to prioritize experiments and study disease mechanisms more quickly. A virtual cell is still a research goal, not a complete digital substitute for living biology; model predictions will require laboratory validation and depend on the quality and coverage of the underlying data. The mix of private funding, public infrastructure and shared scientific data gives the project scale, but it does not remove those scientific limits.