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.

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's $45 billion philanthropy organization is making its first acquisition in order to make it easier for scientists to search, read and tie together more than 26 million science research papers. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is acquiring Meta, an AI-powered research search engine startup, and will make its tool free to all in a few months after enhancing the product. Meta could help scientists find the latest papers related to their own projects, while assisting funding organizations to collaborate with researchers and identify high-potential areas for investment or impact. What's special about Meta is that its AI recognizes authors and citations between papers so it can surface the most important research instead of just what has the best SEO. It also provides free full-text access to 18,000 journals and literature sources. Meta co-founder and CEO Sam Molyneux writes that "Going forward, our intent is not to profit from Meta's data and capabilities; instead we aim to ensure they get to those who need them most, across sectors and as quickly as possible, for the benefit of the world."