Biohub's Alex Rives on virtual cells and the $1.8B push to model life
The Cognitive Revolution · youtube · 2026-10-20
Cognitive Revolution interviews Alex Rives, Head of Science at Biohub and former ESM protein language model lead, on building a predictive world model of life. Biohub's expanded $1.8B Virtual Biology Initiative — with partners including DOE, NIH, Google DeepMind and Meta — aims to map contextual cellular biology across hundreds of billions of cells. Rives argues current AI architectures fall short of simulating true virtual cells and calls for breakthrough measurement tech like the laser phase plate. Roadmap: an information-level cell model within five years, moving medicine from drugs to programmable interventions against cancer and degenerative disease.
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