AI drives dramatic expansion of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's funding to end all diseases

As the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) captivates biomedicine, few people are riding the wave like Priscilla Chan--because few people have her resources. Trained as a pediatrician, Chan and her husband, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, co-run a philanthropy that launched in 2015 with the wildly ambitious--some would say quixotic--goal of curing, preventing, or managing every disease by the end of the century. The couple pledged nearly their entire fortune-- 45 billion then and more than 200 billion today--to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), which would also support their education and progressive causes. Recently, however, the foundation has wound down support for almost everything but science. And this week, CZI announced it is increasing its research spending, doubling down on AI, and vowing to meet Chan and Zuckerberg's biomedical goal even earlier--although CZI won't set a specific target.