Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have donated $25 million through their foundation to a philanthropic effort organized by Bill Gates to explore new coronavirus treatments.
The Gates Foundation donated $50 million last week to what it’s calling the “COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator.” The initiative brings together life sciences companies to collaborate on the development of new vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments for COVID-19.
“The Therapeutics Accelerator will enable researchers to quickly determine whether or not existing drugs have a potential benefit against COVID-19,” Chan and Zuckerberg said in a press release. “We hope these coordinated efforts will help stop the spread of COVID-19 as well as provide shared, reusable strategies to respond to future pandemics.”
The two donations are the largest from tech billionaires since the coronavirus outbreak. Wellcome and Mastercard are supporting the effort as well.
The goal of the initiative is to either develop a new drug or adapt an existing treatment that it could help distribute alongside partnering pharmaceutical companies.
The 15 companies participating in the project kicked off the effort by sharing their proprietary libraries of molecular compounds that have some history of being tested with COVID-19.
The lineup includes big names in biotech such as Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
Tesla delivered nearly 185,000 electric vehicles in the first quarter despite a shortage of computer chips that has hit the global auto industry.
With President Biden unveiling a $2.9 trillion infrastructure plan, the old gas tax formula may not be able to serve as a matching revenue source, especially with the consistent drumbeat of growing the electric vehicle market.
Shyam Gidumal, WeWork president and COO of the Americas, talked about the latest partnership with a city to help guide more businesses back into shared workspaces.
Microsoft won a nearly $22 billion contract to supply U.S. Army combat troops with its virtual reality headsets.
Andrew Williamson, vice president of global government affairs and economic adviser for Huawei, spoke to Cheddar about the Chinese telecom company's lack of communication with President Biden regarding ongoing trade tensions with the U.S.
The four civilian SpaceX crewmembers joined Cheddar to talk about the historic flight to take place this September.
Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic CEO, spoke to Cheddar about the latest shiny space vehicle from the company and the future of commercial space travel.
Cheddar's Baker Machado and Azia Celestino break down video gaming from the console wars to the gamification of job recruiting.
What happens inside a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama could have major implications not just for the country’s second-largest employer but the labor movement at large.
