Forget lab space and head count. The currency of modern research labs is GPUs — at least if you ask Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.
The couple said that their philanthropy, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, needs computing power more than anything else to fulfill its new science and AI-centered mission.
“We are not expanding a lot of square footage, per se, but we’re expanding our compute,” Chan said on an episode of “The a16Z Podcast” that aired November 6, when talking about their investment in Biohub, a collection of biology labs the philanthropy has backed since 2016.
“The researchers, they don’t want employees working for them, they don’t want space, they just want GPUs,” Zuckerberg added.
“In a sense, that’s new lab space. It’s much more expensive than wet lab space,” said Chan, who is a pediatrician by training.
When asked whether they plan to employ more people at “the Biohub proper” or invest in a “network model” with more sites, Zuckerberg said it will probably be a bit of both. CZI has added new biohubs and is building a central AI team, he said.
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Earlier this month, Zuckerberg and Chan announced that CZI would shift its focus and prioritize its work with Biohub, which said the same day that it’s partnering with EvolutionaryScale to leverage AI in its efforts to address human disease.
Biohub said in its announcement that it will increase its compute capacity to 10,000 GPUs by 2028. Chan said on the episode that CZI currently has 1,000 GPUs in its cluster and similarly mentioned plans to get to “the 10,000 range.” She previously said that the philanthropy aims to attract bioresearchers with the promise of computing power rather than salaries that rival Big Tech companies.
When Zuckerberg and Chan founded CZI in 2015, the philanthropy focused on education, public policy, and curing disease. It has shifted toward a more science-driven mission throughout the past few years, and Zuckerberg said it’s now “going all in on AI-powered biology” in the recent press release.
As of November 10, CZI had five AI-related jobs posted on its site, in addition to open positions at Biohub, including a senior director of AI infrastructure and engineering.
