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a16z Podcast · 2 min · Nov 6, 2025

Biohub is scaling compute instead of lab square footage

Priscilla Chan says the modern lab is adding compute rather than floor space. Zuckerberg describes a 1,000-GPU cluster, plans to reach 10,000 GPUs, and a path for outside scientists to apply for access.

PC

Priscilla Chan

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

  • Erik Torenberg, Host · General partner, Andreessen Horowitz

    Helped build Product Hunt; founded On Deck, Village Global and Turpentine.

About this segment

Priscilla Chan says the modern lab is adding compute rather than floor space. Zuckerberg describes a 1,000-GPU cluster, plans to reach 10,000 GPUs, and a path for outside scientists to apply for access.

From “Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan: How AI Will Cure All Disease”, Nov 6, 2025. Watch the full episode

“we are not expanding like a lot of square footage per se, but we're expanding our compute.”
PCPriscilla Chanat 38:35 · a16z Podcast38:35

Takeaways

  1. Large labs may have only tens of GPUs.
  2. Biohub has a 1,000-GPU cluster and plans to reach 10,000.
  3. Outside scientists can propose projects that need the compute.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 3:23Shared tools can tackle science NIH grants leave unfunded5:20
  2. 15:18A shared annotation tool helped create a cell atlas3:16
  3. 21:34Virtual cells could make risky experiments cheaper to test4:02
  4. 11:22Most diseases need treatment tailored to individual biology2:58
  5. 28:00A shared data-and-model loop is driving Biohub's reorganization3:59
  6. 8:50CZI takes on long-term projects with a credible path2:37

  7. 38:17Biohub is scaling compute instead of lab square footage2:17

  8. 18:33Virtual cells will combine specialized models into broader systems2:53Up next

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 38:23

    And, you know, we are relatively centralized, but we still depend on a lot of labs who are doing sort of exact frontier work or complementary work to come together to support this. There's that. But one more thought on your expansion question is like, and maybe this is like the modern AI lab, we are not expanding like a lot of square footage per se, but we're expanding our compute. The researchers, they don't want employees working for them.

  2. 38:50

    They don't want space. Yeah, they just want GPUs. So it's just like, in a sense, that's new lab space. It's much more expensive than web lab space. And you guys have always been creative on that, even in the last few years. You've created ways to share access to compute. You've enabled academic labs to, you know, I forgot the name of your program. Scientists in Residence or something like that. But your compute rental kind of telling clusters.

  3. 39:19

    Well, the core of it is, you know, if you look at individual labs, they'll have like, like a large lab would have tens of GPUs. And we were the first to really build a large scale compute cluster. A thousand now where we have plans to move to the 10,000 range. And that one requires a different type of project. Obviously, you're able to ask different types of questions. and it's a resource that we use but also we've invited scientists to apply and say like what question do you have that could use this amount of resource and be able to to sort of see collaborations that way.

  4. 40:03

    And so if a scientist is out there listening, like who's not employed by the biohub or working at the biohub but wants to collaborate with the biohub, that you're going to create really interesting doors to utilize the resources. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, the GPUs are somewhat zero-sum, right? So the data is, so, yeah. Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. So you're about to celebrate 10 years doing this.