Biohub expands Virtual Biology Initiative with a $1.8 billion package including DOE, NIH and DeepMind

Google DeepMind

On 7 October 2026 Biohub, the US Department of Energy, the NIH and partners announced a $1.8 billion expansion of the Virtual Biology Initiative. The goal is open, AI-ready biological data to train models that could predict how cells respond to interventions, though no finished model is announced.

• The DOE will contribute more than $500 million over five years for lab measurement, modeling and computing.
• Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs and Meta are investing $300 million together in technologies and multimodal datasets; the split by company is not given.
• Biohub builds on its earlier $500 million commitment, and the NIH will coordinate datasets drawn from more than $500 million in earlier federal investment.
• The long-term aim is a predictive 'virtual cell' that could help prioritise lab experiments and study disease mechanisms; the announcement describes no clinical product.