Trip to SF for CZI BioHub AIxBio meeting

This is a brief post without a lot of details on the meeting. I took notes for many of the talks – on paper and will add some details from those notes later when I can.

So I went to SF for a meeting on October 7 at the SF Mint. The meeting was organized by the CZI BioHub. I did not know but clearly this meeting was timed to concide with a big announcement. For example see these articles about the announcement.

• International, cross-sector collaboration commits nearly $2 billion to build foundational data for AI models to predict and treat disease
• Google invests millions in Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to create a ‘virtual cell’
• “The beginning of a new scientific paradigm”: Zuckerberg’s Biohub, U.S. and Google build virtual cell

🧵 Biohub, @ENERGY, @NIH, and new funding partners today announced a major expansion of an international effort to generate and make accessible the data enabling predictive AI models of biology. Together, the organizations are investing $1.8 billion in funding, data, computation…

— biohub (@biohub) October 7, 2026

BREAKING: The U.S. government, Google, Meta & Zuckerberg-backed @biohub are launching a $1.8B push to build the data layer for AI biology.

The goal is to create the largest open, AI-ready biological dataset ever assembled, giving models the data needed to better predict how… pic.twitter.com/Y4KaV2GcUh

— Molly O’Shea (@MollySOShea) October 7, 2026

But first, an aside. I got to SF mid day on 10/6 and got in a nice walk where I discovered something new for me – Salesforce Park. An above ground park in SF. I went for a walk there with my camera. Here are some pics

On the morning of the 7th I headed over toe the SF Mint from my hotel.

And after waiting for them to open the doors, then I went inside, had some coffee and the meeting soon started.

The meeting was interesting and there were some useful comments from the panel discussions in particular. Here are a few pics and links to posts about the sessions by others.

Lori Goler have an opening introduction.

Alex Rives discussed the new announcement.

Panel 1: Translational impact

• Priscilla Chan – Biohub (she was not there and was replaced)
• Michael Fischbach – Stanford University
• Alex Rives – Biohub
• Moderated by Euan Ashley – Stanford University

Panel 2: Unlocking the future of biology

• Moderated by Lori Goler – Biohub
• Brad Bower – National Institutes of Health
• Shana Kelley – Biohub
• Dorothy Koch – U.S. Department of Energy

During the Unlocking the Future of Biology panel at our AIxBio event, Brad Bower of @NIH, Biohub's @ShanaOKelley, and Dorothy Koch of @ENERGY brought up AI-ready data and why it takes an international effort.

Data generation is essential to building predictive models of life… pic.twitter.com/TGtMDY6luK

— biohub (@biohub) October 7, 2026

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Panel 3: Bringing AI into contact with frontier biology

• Moderated by Brandon Anderson – Atomic AI; Latent Space: The AI Engineer podcast
• Salvatore Candido – Biohub
• Pushmeet Kohli – Google DeepMind

Foundational models are evolving, and next-gen AI could unlock new ways of doing scientific discovery.

At AIxBio, @pushmeet and @salcandido discussed data and scaling, dynamics, function and design, interpretability, and the path to the clinic, moderated by Brandon Anderson of… pic.twitter.com/Mk63KCMZ7u

— biohub (@biohub) October 8, 2026

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Brief talk: : A technology showcase: Making the invisible visible

• Bridget Carragher – Biohub

Panel 4: New frontiers in scientific technology

• Jay Shendure – HHMI; University of Washington; Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology; AI BioDesign;  Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine
• Jonathan Weissman – HHMI; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Whitehead Institute
• Moderated by Stephani Otte – Biohub

Then there was lunch and some demos and I headed off to the airport to go to the Sage Assembly 2026 meeting.