US government, Google and Meta back $1.8B push for largest open AI-ready biology dataset

anshulkundaje · x · 2026-10-08

The U.S. government, Google, Meta and the Zuckerberg-backed Biohub are launching a $1.8B push to build the largest open, AI-ready biological dataset ever assembled, aimed at models that predict how biology works and help treat disease.
Breakdown: Biohub $500M; DOE $500M+ across measurement, modeling and compute; NIH $500M+ in federally funded datasets and repositories; Meta, Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs jointly adding $300M.
Scientist Sri Kosuri praises the talent and compute (5X ENCODE resources in 5X less time) but remains wary of the 'virtual cell' direction, questioning whether such models can truly encode our understanding of cell behavior.

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