The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub has unveiled a powerful new AI model for protein structure prediction that promises to dramatically accelerate drug discovery and our understanding of biological systems. The model builds on the ESM lineage, expanding from hundreds of millions to billions of mapped protein structures.
Proteins are the molecular machines that carry out virtually every biological function in living organisms. Understanding their three-dimensional structures is fundamental to designing drugs, understanding disease, and developing new biotechnologies — and what once took years now takes minutes with advanced AI models.
EvolutionaryScale AI — the company that continued developing ESM models after they originated at Meta’s Fundamental AI Research team — was acquired by Biohub in late 2025, bringing its expertise under the Biohub’s non-profit scientific mission.
The latest release dramatically increases coverage of known biological diversity, including proteins from organisms in extreme environments that could hold the key to entirely new classes of drugs and materials.
For the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, the model represents a powerful new tool that could compress drug development timelines from decades to years — potentially saving countless lives and reducing the enormous costs associated with bringing new medicines to market.
