AI x Bio startups still have to do the hard stuff: labs, trials, proprietary data
anshulkundaje · x · 2026-10-02
Joe Horsman argues AI x Bio companies can't stay in bits alone — they must build real bio companies: labs, clinical trials, and petabytes of proprietary data.
Key points:
- AI is good at generating hypotheses, but science's hard part is validating them in the real world
- Public bio data is a biased mess; performance must be ground out disease by disease
- Full lab automation isn't realistic — clever experimental design and multiplexed sequencing beat robot arms
- Fully relying on CROs risks data quality when vendor tech degrades
Bottom line: skip the hard stuff and you won't capture most of the value you create.
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