Latest news with #ChanZuckerbergInitiative
Forbes
13-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Somite AI Raises $47M Series A To Reinvent Cell Replacement Therapy
Regenerative medicine and therapeutic stem cell therapy to regrow damaged cells as treatment for ... More disease Startup Somite AI announced today that it has raised over $47 million in a Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to about $60 million. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from SciFi VC, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Fusion Fund, Ajinomoto Group Ventures, Pitango HealthTech, TechAviv, Harpoon Ventures, and prominent angel investors such as Fidji Simo, the new CEO of Applications at OpenAI. Legendary investor Vinod Khosla said in a statement: 'Somite AI's foundation models, once fully developed and validated, will not only create value for their own pipeline, but have the potential to reshape the entire field of human cell therapy.' Somite's initial ambition was to design a 'life language model' to drive the development of Somites, the embryonic structures at the origin of the musculoskeletal system, and use them in cell replacement therapy targeting particular ailments such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common hereditary neuromuscular disease. With today's announcement, Somite is publicly broadening its scope, aiming to revolutionize the production of any human cell type through its AI foundation model platform, DeltaStem, to address a broad spectrum of diseases, including metabolic disorders such as Type 1 Diabetes, orthopedic conditions, muscular diseases, and blood disorders. When Somite was established just over a year ago, the founders asked themselves what they would be able to do if they could create any type of human cell. 'We'd be able to replace and replenish any diseased or damaged tissue in the body,' says co-founder and CEO Micha Breakstone, defining their mission as reverse engineering of stem cell biology with artificial intelligence. 'Today, we only know how to reliably produce about 10 types of cells, but there are over 5,000 types of cells in the human cell atlas,' says Breakstone. 'There are more possible ways of creating a specific cell than there are atoms in the universe.' To take a stem cell to a specific mature state, researchers adjust both its environment and the specific biological signals it receives—such as the concentration of a growth factor or a change in pH—learning through step-by-step experimentation the precise sequence of conditions that guide its developmental trajectory. How do you re-engineer a process that takes many years, tens of millions of dollars, and lots of trial and error, with no guaranteed result? As in other domains (e.g., quantum computing error correction), where the 'search space,' the initial set of potential solutions to a problem, is beyond human comprehension (e.g., larger than the number of atoms in the universe), AI could be of great help. However, you need vast quantities of data to successfully apply today's AI or deep learning. The first ingredient in Somite's recipe for developing a cell foundation model is its innovative method for efficiently generating data at scale in a completely natural way. Professor Alon Klein, another Somite co-founder, had a thinking-inside-the-box breakthrough moment when he asked, as Breakstone tells it, 'What would happen if instead of taking the signals to the cells, we take the cells to the signals?' The box or boxes in this case are semi-permeable capsules, each containing a few cells, with minuscule 'windows' allowing the signals to come in and affect the cells. The Somite lab team sends millions of these capsules through many signals or conditions, and each cell-condition encounter is recorded with a barcode. Put all the barcodes together and 'you get an address that correlates with exactly the specific trajectory that the capsule went through, a beautiful model of the development of the embryo,' explains Breakstone. This capsule technology generates cell state transition data at an unprecedented scale, achieving 1000x greater efficiency than existing methodologies. For Jonathan Rosenfeld, another Somite co-founder, this data serves as the basis for developing an AI foundation model for the human cell. Currently, Somite is running experiments at roughly a one-million-condition scale, mapping the developmental paths embryonic cells take under these varied conditions. It plans to reach 10 million conditions by the end of the year. Given the enormous size of the 'search space,' even 100 million would be just a drop in the vast ocean of 'protocols,' all the possible trajectories of cell development. 'However,' says Breakstone, 'it's a drop large enough to learn from, and that's the beauty of deep learning. From a relatively small amount of data, we can develop and train a working model to generate novel protocols that we haven't seen before.' With its DeltaStem platform, Somite aims to overcome key challenges of current lab-based stem cell development—the prohibitively expensive, slow, manual, trial-and-error methods researchers use to guide stem cells toward specific mature cell types. Major obstacles include purity (percentage of desired cells produced), scalability (efficient cell manufacturing at therapeutic scale), and reproducibility (consistent results across batches). 'What AlphaFold did by predicting protein structures, transforming structural biology, DeltaStem aims to achieve for stem cell biology—predicting the conditions needed to precisely generate mature human cell types at scale,' says Breakstone. Unlike biotech companies traditionally engaged in individual drug development, 'TechBio' companies like Somite focus on developing broad technology platforms addressing multiple indications. Their approach is data-driven, and their goal is to develop proprietary AI that reduces costs and risks, shortens drug and treatment development time, and accelerates the shift to more personalized medicine. The success of Moderna and the Nobel Prize awarded to AlphaFold have attracted increased venture capital and corporate investment in applying data and AI to current healthcare challenges, including improving regenerative medicine: 'Artificial intelligence presents broad utility in the discovery and development of new biotherapeutics.' Somite's AI foundation model and platform will help build a future 'where we can create any human cell on demand, like a supply of cellular spare parts to repair or replace diseased or damaged tissue,' says Breakstone.
Daily Mail
08-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Outraged parents make damaging revelation about Mark Zuckerberg's wife after closure of couple's school
Outraged parents of students at a Bay Area school, founded by Mark Zuckerberg 's wife Priscilla Chan, are demanding to know why it will be closing next year. The Primary School, which operates two tuition-free elementary schools a stone's throw away from Meta 's headquarters in Menlo Park, announced in April that the 2025-2026 school year would be its last. The announcement did not offer much in the way of an explanation for why, only telling parents 'more details will come.' Chan, 40, is a pediatrician and much of her day-to-day work involves directing millions of dollars worth of philanthropic contributions through her and her husband's charity, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Chan founded the Primary School through the foundation in 2016, with its mission being to serve low-income families in this very affluent area of California. Parents of the roughly 450 students at the East Palo Alto school, which offers pre-K through sixth grade, are now saying that Chan did not attend the Zoom meeting where they were told it would be shutting down. Reneisha Hunt, who has a three-year-old child at the school, said it was difficult to hear the devastating news 'from the faculty and not [Chan].' 'She was not on the Zoom. She wasn't attending it,' Hunt told KRON 4, adding that her child had been on the waiting list for the Primary School 'since he was in my stomach.' It appears Chan's last publicly known visit to the school was in November 2023, when she was photographed reading a picture book to a Kindergarten class. Kyleigh Whitley, whose son and niece attend the East Palo Alto location, said that the staff members she spoke to seemed confused. 'Since I've heard the news, I've spoken with a couple of different staff members and it was a shock to them,' she said. 'Everyone is really disappointed about it.' Some parents have questioned why there can't be a fundraising effort to save the school, especially because the closure announcement said the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative 'will make a $50M investment over the next few years in the East Palo Alto, Belle Haven, and East Bay communities.' approached the Primary School's board and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for comment. The Primary School's Board Chair, Jean-Claude Brizard, also did not immediately return a request for comment. Over the next year, the school's board of directors has pledged that some of that $50 million will go toward setting up 529 education savings accounts for the students. These kinds of accounts, typically used for college, can also be used to pay for tuition at public or private K-12 schools, a change brought about by President Donald Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's investment will also fund 'transition specialists' that will help parents move their kids to new schools in the area. Zuckerberg announced the school's founding in 2015, saying in a Facebook post that he was 'so proud of Priscilla.' 'It's inspiring to see Priscilla grow as an entrepreneur and leader. I'm looking forward to watching with pride as she develops The Primary School into a great resource for our community,' he added. 'The goal is to support families and help children from underserved communities reach their full potential.' The Primary School's impending closure comes as Zuckerberg appears to be on a mission to mend his public image as someone who comes across 'robotic,' something he admitted applies to him in a 2019 interview with NBC News' Lester Holt. The Meta CEO has long been sharing his love for Brazilian jiu-jitsu by posting pictures of himself sparring with people. More recently, he shared what supplements he takes every morning. Amid the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, he lamented the fact that the average American has fewer than three friends while attending a conference this week hosted by tech company Stripe. His solution is to get socially disconnected people to make friends with AI companions. 'I think people are going to want a system that knows them well and that kind of understands them in the way that their feed algorithms do,' Zuckerberg said Tuesday. ''For people who don't have a person who's a therapist, I think everyone will have an AI.'
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Primary School parents demand answers over planned closure
(KRON) — Parents of 450 students attending the Primary School in East Palo Alto are demanding answers on why their school is closing next year. 2 coaches suspended after racist remarks fly at East Bay high school baseball game The Primary School board announced the closure in April. Parents say the announcement came as a surprise and without any explanation. They are asking for more transparency from the Primary School board. Reneisha Hunt's three-year-old is among the hundreds of students at the Primary School. She says that she and other parents learned about the school's closure on Zoom. 'I called my mom after and was like, 'What do I do? Because he's been on the waiting list since he was in my stomach,' says Hunt. 'I think I cut off the Zoom link after that. I was like, 'I'm over it at this point.'' The school was founded in 2016 by Meta founder, Mark Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan, and funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Parents say they're upset Chan hasn't directly reached out to them. 'It was kind of hard for them to hear it from the faculty and not her,' says Hunt. 'She was not on the Zoom. She wasn't attending it.' Kyleigh Whitley's son and niece attend the school. She says even the staff seemed confused. 'Since I've heard the news, I've spoken with a couple of different staff members and it was a shock to them,' says Whitley. 'It was a surprise. Everyone is really disappointed about it.' Carson Cook is the senior manager of strategy and advancement at the Primary School. He says he is also upset but is focused on finishing the last school year strong. 'It's a moment of grief,' says Cook. 'Every time you walk through these doors, there's so much energy, there is so much life. It's a school, right? It's a really joyous place to be.' Hunt says she and other parents feel hopeless in trying to save their school and have no other choice than to move on. 'You guys keep saying 'it's closing, there's nothing to do,' 'there's no way to fundraise to keep it open,' 'there's no alternatives to keep it open and stay afloat'— so it is what it is, let it go,' says Hunt. The Primary School board has a 529 education savings plan for all students that will support future learning — meaning they will be working with parents over the course of the year to set up the accounts so their children can use the money for education. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4.
NDTV
29-04-2025
- Business
- NDTV
School Opened By Zuckerberg And Wife To Close After 10 Years, Parents Stunned
An elementary school opened by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, in California is set to close next year, much to the surprise of parents. The tuition-free school for low-income communities of colour was founded in 2016 by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) in East Palo Alto, just a few kilometres away from Meta's headquarters. The parents were invited over for breakfast when the news of the abrupt closure was delivered to them, according to a report in The New York Times. "After much deliberation, our schools in East Palo Alto and the East Bay will be closing at the end of the 2025-26 school year. This was a very difficult decision, and we are committed to ensuring a thoughtful and supportive transition for students and families over the next year." "To sustain The Primary School's legacy, CZI will make a $50M investment over the next few years in the East Palo Alto, Belle Haven, and East Bay communities." 'Guy who's been giving money' Emeline Vainikolo, a parent, said that her kindergartner son told her the reason for the school shutting down after hearing it from his teacher. "'Mommy, the guy [Zuckerberg] who's been giving money to our school doesn't want to give it to us anymore,'" he told her. The school started with just preschoolers, but was expected to eventually serve toddlers through eighth graders, adding one grade every year. The 2025-26 school year will be the first time it has offered eighth grade, and the last. Though the school did not provide a reason for the closure, the announcement comes at a time when Mr Zuckerberg has taken a strong 180 on his social beliefs as he attempts to curry favour with the Trump administration. At Meta, Mr Zuckerberg has already ended the diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, known as DEI. The company is said to be focusing on providing "fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background".
New York Post
28-04-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan to close free school for low-income Bay Area students a decade after it opened
A tuition-free school founded by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, for low-income communities of color in the Bay Area is abruptly shutting its doors — only a decade after it opened. The Primary School, founded in 2016 by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, sought to provide free schooling, health care and social work resources to families in the East Palo Alto area, just a few miles from Meta's headquarters. It decried the systemic effects of racism and poverty, and Chan, a pediatrician married to Zuckerberg, and her late educator friend Meredith Liu often discussed how low-income children were more likely to experience impactful trauma early in their lives. Advertisement 3 The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative opened The Primary School in 2016 in the East Palo Alto area. Google Maps But The Primary School, and its sister campus in the East Bay, sent shockwaves throughout the community last week when it announced it would close at the end of the 2025-26 school year. Though it did not provide a reason for the closure, it comes as Zuckerberg has executed a strong political about-face as he tries to curry favor with the Trump administration. Advertisement The Primary School and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative did not immediately respond to The Post's requests for comment. Earlier this year, just weeks before Trump's inauguration, Zuckerberg killed Meta's DEI programs and scrapped the social media platform's fact-checking policies in favor of a 'Community Notes' model. Trump ally Elon Musk uses a similar note system on X, arguing that content moderation policies infringe on free speech. Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund through Meta, and, alongside Chan, sat upfront at his inauguration. Meta also agreed to pay a whopping $25 million to settle a lawsuit Trump brought against the company for suspending his account after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. About $22 million of that figure will help fund a Trump presidential library. Advertisement 3 Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos at President Trump's inauguration. Getty Images Emeline Vainikolo, a parent with children in the district, told The New York Times that she and other parents were invited by school administrators to a breakfast of bagels, fruit and Starbucks coffee when they dropped the news of the closure, but were given no reason. Her son, a kindergartner at The Primary School, later shared what he had gleaned from his teacher. ''Mommy, the guy who's been giving money to our school doesn't want to give it to us anymore,'' he told his mother, according to the Times. Advertisement Zuckerberg and Chan's nonprofit, CZI, plans to invest $50 million in the school's surrounding communities over the next few years, donating to education savings plans for all Primary School students, as well as support for families transitioning to new districts. In February, the initiative announced it would focus on science and 'wind down' its social advocacy work – including investments in immigration reform and racial equity grantmaking, as well as internal DEI programs. 3 Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg at the 2025 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony in Santa Monica, Calif. Getty Images Families at The Primary School, however, said CZI's sudden departure is just another slap in the face from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, who have contributed to a housing shortage thanks to an influx of highly-paid tech workers. The Primary School 'was highly publicized as a gift to the community,' one parent told the San Francisco Standard. 'They were already taking our homes because of Facebook, landlords pricing us out. Now they're gonna take this away too. It seems unfair.'
