Vital Signs with Jacob Effron and Nikhil Krishnan Ep 61: Co-Founder of Chai Discovery Joshua Meier on 99% Faster Drug Discovery, BioTech’s AlphaGo Moment, Building Photoshop for Molecules
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Sep 22, 2025 
Joshua Meier, co-founder and CEO of Chai Discovery and former Chief AI Officer at Absci, dives into the transformative role of AI in drug discovery. He explains the evolution through three waves of AI, achieving success rates once deemed impossible. The conversation reveals how AI models think differently from human chemists and the implications of open-sourcing foundational models. Joshua highlights the creativity of AI in generating solutions and discusses key milestones that could redefine the future of pharmaceuticals and biotech.
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CHI‑2 Achieves High First‑Pass Success
- CHI-2 acts like 'Photoshop for molecules' by prompting design and producing testable molecules.
- In lab tests across 50 targets, CHI-2 reached ~20% binding success versus a 1% target benchmark.
Diffusion Models Better Capture Structural Uncertainty
- Diffusion models enable sampling many structural hypotheses rather than collapsing to an averaged structure.
- Sampling diverse candidates plus ranking yields better structure predictions for design.
Models Surprise Chemists With Creative Hits
- Chai's open models produced creative solutions that human chemists initially doubted but then validated in the lab.
- Those surprising successes increased the team's confidence and ambition for new projects.