Nonprofit launches with $500M to modernize scientific process for AI era

Allison DeAngelis is the East Coast biotech and venture capital reporter at STAT, reporting where scientific ideas and money meet. She is also co-host of the weekly biotech podcast, The Readout Loud. You can reach Allison on Signal at AllisonDeAngelis.01.

There is no shortage of artificial intelligence ventures in the life sciences these days, many of them aimed at using technology to, say, design proteins or optimize clinical trials. But scientist Seemay Chou believes the scientific process itself needs to modernize to adapt to the AI era — and she has at least $500 million in funding to help make it happen.

In an exclusive interview with STAT, Chou said her new venture Radial will be housed within her AI-focused foundation, the Astera Institute. Radial will be focused on what CEO Becky Pferdehirt calls the “unglamorous, unsexy infrastructure and tools” needed to change how scientific data are generated, shared, and built upon. Projects will fail. And the results will be available for the world to see.

“If we don’t fix those things soon, we’ll never see the value of AI fully, whether it’s science or biotech or whatever. So, it’s really forcing us to grapple with how the systems need to be updated,” said Chou.