Episode

Ep 72: Co-Founder of Chai Discovery Joshua Meier on 99% Faster Drug Discovery, BioTech’s AlphaGo Moment, Building Photoshop for Molecules

Podcast
Unsupervised Learning with Jacob Effron
Published
Aug 13, 2025
Duration seconds
3435
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not_requested
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https://unsupervised-learning.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-72-co-founder-of-chai-discovery-joshua-meier-on-99-faster-drug-discovery-biotechs-alphago-moment-building-photoshop-for-molecules-l2bPtBY2
Audio
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Summary

In this episode, Jacob sits down with Joshua Meier, co-founder of Chai Discovery and former Chief AI Officer at Absci, to explore the breakthrough moment happening in AI drug discovery. They discuss how the field has evolved through three distinct waves, with the current generation of companies finally achieving success rates that seemed impossible just years ago. The conversation covers everything from moving drug discovery out of the lab and into computers, to why AI models think differently than human chemists, to the strategic decisions around open sourcing foundational models while keeping design capabilities proprietary. It's an in-depth look at how AI is fundamentally changing pharmaceutical innovation and what it means for the future of medicine.