Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan: How AI Will Help Cure Disease
As part of our summer replay series, we're revisiting one of our favorite conversations from the past year.
Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan join Ben Horowitz, Vineeta Agarwala, and Erik Torenberg to discuss the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's ambitious effort to help cure, prevent, and manage disease by the end of the century.
Rather than funding individual breakthroughs, CZI is focused on building the tools and infrastructure that can accelerate scientific discovery across entire fields. The conversation explores Biohub, Cell Atlas, virtual cell models, open biological datasets, and the growing role of AI in helping researchers better understand human biology.
They discuss why biology still lacks a "periodic table of elements," how AI could help scientists test hypotheses before running expensive experiments, and why pairing frontier biology with frontier AI may unlock a new era of medical discovery.
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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
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Biohub: The Future of Biology is Open-Source with Co-Founders Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, and Head of Science Alex Rives
Biohub started with an ambitious goal of curing, preventing, and managing all disease by the end of the century. A decade later, thanks to the convergence of frontier AI and biological data, that goal may have been too conservative. In this episode, Elad Gil and Sarah Guo sit down with Biohub co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, alongside Biohub Head of Science Alex Rives. Together, they discuss Biohub’s $500 million virtual biology initiative, which integrates frontier AI with wet-lab work to build predictive world models of cells, proteins, and systems. They also talk about their newly announced open-source engine for digital protein and antibody design, ESMFold2; why Biohub is a nonprofit rather than a venture-backed startup; and how hierarchical simulations will soon allow doctors to treat patients at an individual, mechanistic level.
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Chapters:
00:00 – Cold Open
01:02 - Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, and Alex Rives Introduction
01:26 – Why Biohub and Their Mission
08:27 – Integrating Frontier AI and Frontier Biology
09:45 – Micro to Macro Biological Modeling
14:22 – Mechanistic Interpretiability
16:58 – Why Biohub is a Non-Profit
21:41 – Understanding How Biology Works
24:23 – Timeline for Curing All Diseases
26:25 – Translating Research to Patient Impact
28:04 – Launch of ESMFold2
32:13 – Tackling Off-Target Effects and Edge Cases
38:39 – Putting the Tech in Individual Hands
41:06 – Talent at Biohub
44:25 – What’s Next After ESMFold2
46:10 – Connecting ESMFold2 to Agentic Systems
46:51 – The Virtual Cell
49:33 – Defining Success for Biohub
51:52 – Biohub Strategy Update
56:20 – Conclusion
The AI-Powered Biohub: Why Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan are Investing in Data, from Latent.Space
This crossover episode from the Latent Space podcast features Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan on the 10-year anniversary of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and their expanded Biohub vision. They discuss how a “Frontier Biology Lab” working in sync with a “Frontier AI Lab” could enable breakthroughs like a Virtual Cell and true N-of-1 precision medicine. The conversation covers the acquisition of Evolutionary Scale and ESM3, new biological data collection at scale, and how AI-powered biology might transform drug discovery and disease prevention.
Sponsors:
Blitzy:
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CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(04:27) CZI origins and focus
(08:29) Why tools over cures
(14:43) Virtual cells and imaging (Part 1)
(20:19) Sponsors: Blitzy | Framer
(23:24) Virtual cells and imaging (Part 2)
(25:22) Data diversity and grounding
(32:30) Evaluating models and Biohub (Part 1)
(37:53) Sponsors: Serval | Tasklet
(40:42) Evaluating models and Biohub (Part 2)
(41:06) Future healthcare and aging
(53:39) Modeling scales and immunity
(58:53) Timelines, data, and collaboration
(01:04:01) Outro
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Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan: How AI Will Cure All Disease
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg join a16z’s Ben Horowitz, Erik Torenberg, and Vineeta Agarwala to share how the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is building the computational tools that will accelerate the cure, prevention, and management of all disease by century's end. They explain why basic science needs $100 million-scale projects that traditional NIH grants can't fund, how their Cell Atlas became biology's missing periodic table with millions of cells catalogued in open-source format, and why their new virtual cell models will let scientists test high-risk hypotheses in silico before investing in expensive wet lab work. Plus: the organizational shift unifying the Biohub under AI leadership, what happens when biologists and engineers sit side-by-side, and why modern biology labs are expanding compute instead of square footage.
Timestamps:
4:17 - Building tools to accelerate scientific discovery
5:47 - The credible path to funding basic science
7:21 - Biohub = Frontier Biology + Frontier AI
9:05 - Challenges building on a 10-15 year timeline
9:43 - How CZI chooses what to work on
11:15 - Making sense of science with LLMs
11:31 - Measuring success in the therapeutic realm
13:32 - “Most diseases should be thought of as rare diseases”
15:39 - Inspiration: building a periodic table for biology
19:27 - Why virtual cells?
21:17 - The Biohub Master Plan
21:51 - How virtual cell models allow more risk taking
28:15 - Bringing CZI & Biohub together
30:32 - Why Biohub matters
33:36 - The importance of interface design in democratizing scientific discovery
35:34 - How Biohub encourages cross-functional collaboration
40:38 - Looking ahead: the broader impact of AI on biotech
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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
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Curing All Human Diseases & the Future of Health & Technology | Mark Zuckerberg & Dr. Priscilla Chan
In this episode, my guests are Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook, Inc.), and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, M.D., co-founder and co-CEO of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). We discuss how CZI plans to cure all human diseases by the end of this century by funding transformative projects and technologies at the intersection of biology, engineering, and artificial intelligence (AI). They describe their funding and development of Biohubs and the progress already underway to accelerate the understanding of cell function, pathways, and disease. Then, Mark discusses social media, its impact on mental health, and new tools for online experiences. We also discuss Meta’s virtual reality (VR), augmented and mixed reality tech, and how AI will soon completely transform our online and physical life experiences. This episode ought to interest anyone curious about biology, medicine, mental health, AI, and the future of technology and humanity.
For show notes, including referenced articles and additional resources, please visit hubermanlab.com.
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Thank you to our sponsors
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Momentous: https://livemomentous.com/huberman
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Mark Zuckerberg & Dr. Priscilla Chan
(00:02:31) Sponsors: LMNT & Waking Up
(00:05:35) Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) & Human Disease Research
(00:08:51) Innovation & Discovery, Science & Engineering
(00:12:53) Funding, Building Tools & Imaging
(00:17:57) Healthy vs. Diseased Cells, Human Cell Atlas & AI, Virtual Cells
(00:21:59) Single Cell Methods & Disease; CELLxGENE Tool
(00:26:30) Sponsor: AG1
(00:29:53) AI & Hypothesis Generation; Long-term Projects & Collaboration
(00:35:14) Large Language Models (LLMs), In Silico Experiments
(00:42:11) CZI Biohubs, Chicago, New York
(00:50:52) Universities & Biohubs; Therapeutics & Rare Diseases
(00:57:23) Optimism; Children & Families
(01:07:25) Technology & Health, Positive & Negative Interactions
(01:13:17) Algorithms, Clickbait News, Individual Experience
(01:19:17) Parental Controls, Meta Social Media Tools & Tailoring Experience
(01:24:51) Time, Usage & Technology, Parental Tools
(01:28:55) Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality Experiences & Smart Glasses
(01:36:09) Physical Exercise & Virtual Product Development
(01:44:19) Virtual Futures for Creativity & Social Interactions
(01:49:31) Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses: Potential, Privacy & Risks
(02:00:20) Visual System & Smart Glasses, Augmented Reality
(02:06:42) AI Assistants & Creators, Identity Protection
(02:13:26) Zero-Cost Support, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Momentous, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter
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