Biohub Expands Virtual Biology Initiative to $1.8 Billion With DOE, NIH, DeepMind and Meta

On October 7, Biohub, a nonprofit research institute backed by Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, announced an expanded Virtual Biology Initiative with a total scale of about $1.8 billion. The U.S. Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs and Meta are joining the effort. NVIDIA will provide computing infrastructure, and multiple cell and genomics research organizations will take part in data production and standard-setting.

The funding is not all new cash. Biohub is contributing $500 million, while the DOE plans to invest more than $500 million from 2026 through 2031. The NIH will coordinate the use of data and research facilities supported by more than $500 million in previous federal investment. Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs and Meta together plan to invest $300 million. Biohub has earmarked $400 million for cryo-electron tomography, live-cell imaging and bioengineering tools, with another $100 million supporting external research. The DOE will provide supercomputing, imaging facilities and automated laboratories, while the NIH will contribute disease data and public databases.

The initiative aims to address data bottlenecks in AI-driven biology. It is designed to develop unified standards, identifiers and access points, and to generate more intervention data for building "virtual cells" — AI systems that learn from genomic, protein, imaging and perturbation data to predict how cells respond to drugs, gene editing or environmental changes. Biological data currently sit across papers, lab records and public databases, with inconsistent formats and limited publication of failed experiments, which constrains model predictions of novel drugs and targets.

Biohub is an independent nonprofit and not part of Meta, though Meta is an investor and a source of some of its AI technology and talent.