EvolutionaryScale: Meta’s Ex-Researchers Transform into AI Avengers with $40 Million Boost

<p>A motley crew of eight scientific sorcerers, all hailing from the same secret cabal of brainiacs, embarked on a quest akin to creating a Transformers-based model that&rsquo;s essentially the lovechild of OpenAI&rsquo;s GPT-4 and Google&rsquo;s Bard. But hold your horses, this AI prodigy isn&rsquo;t obsessed with world domination; it&rsquo;s obsessed with proteins.</p> <blockquote> <p>These wiz-kids trained it on data about protein molecules to predict the elusive structures of unknown proteins.</p> </blockquote> <h2>The result?</h2> <h2>A database bursting at the seams with a staggering 700 million potential 3D structures, which are like the Holy Grail for concocting drugs that could be our ticket to curing diseases, taming unruly microorganisms, or cooking up innovative ways to make industrial chemicals.</h2> <blockquote> <p>Fast-forward to June, and these mad scientists are making their pitch to venture capitalists, brandishing their pitchforks &mdash; I mean, pitch documents.</p> <p>Lux Capital, ever the champion of the nerdy and ambitious, decided to lead the charge and forked out around $40 million to fuel their AI escapades. Whispers in the lab (and by &ldquo;lab,&rdquo; I mean the grapevine) say that this merry round of financing slapped a nifty $200 million price tag on EvolutionaryScale&rsquo;s head.</p> </blockquote> <h2>Now, let&rsquo;s get down to the nitty-gritty. But first, what is protein folding anyway?</h2> <blockquote> <p>Proteins, those enigmatic giants made up of squiggly chains of amino acids, are the unsung heroes of the biological world. Their superpowers are hidden in their shapes, and these shapes can do a fancy cha-cha when they rub shoulders with other chemicals or proteins inside our bodies.</p> </blockquote> <p>These shape-shifters often hold the keys to treating diseases and predicting their dance moves is like predicting the weather on Jupiter (trust me, it&rsquo;s complicated). But that&rsquo;s where our nerdy knights come in, armed with their AI Excalibur. They&rsquo;re mapping out protein structures like never before, helping scientists narrow down which proteins are the VIPs worth rolling out the red carpet for.</p> <p><a href="https://jasminbharadiya.medium.com/evolutionaryscale-metas-ex-researchers-transform-into-ai-avengers-with-40-million-boost-447b93f24780">Visit Now</a></p>