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At the moment, a glance at Israel from three completely different angles: drug discovery, AI-enabled cybersecurity threats, and investor reactions to the political disaster. — Anna

From spatial biology to proteomics

Chipmaker Nvidia invested $50 million into biotech startup Recursion, which now plans to “speed up [the] growth of its AI basis fashions for biology and chemistry,” based on a press launch.

Recursion CTO Ben Mabey stated the corporate goals to construct “a definitive basis mannequin for the drug discovery house.” That’s no straightforward feat; its CEO Chris Gibson referred to drug discovery as “one of many world’s most troublesome challenges.”

Nonetheless, each Recursion and Nvidia hope AI will help remedy this problem. “Generative AI is a revolutionary device to find new medicines and coverings,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote in a canned assertion.

Recursion is much from the one firm engaged on this; in Could, it acquired two corporations within the AI-enabled drug discovery house, Cyclica and Valence. However whereas these three corporations are headquartered in North America, I couldn’t assist however discover that quite a few their rivals are primarily based in Israel.

I requested Lior Handelsman and Renana Ashkenazi, two basic companions at Israeli VC agency Grove Ventures, why Israel could also be an AI-enabled biotech hotbed. They talked about some elements I used to be anticipating, similar to tutorial expertise and the entrepreneurial spirit that already turned the nation right into a Startup Nation. However Ashkenazi additionally famous that the profile of biotech founders is altering.