“We’re not doing 30 bets a year”: Vijay Pande on betting small after running $4 billion at a16z
Vijay Pande argues that biology is becoming an engineering discipline, but expensive clinical trials still slow progress, and AI will only transform medicine if the field embraces open, shared datasets instead of isolated proprietary ones.
MAIN POINTS
- Pande says biology is shifting from discovery-driven science to engineering-like design.
- Clinical trials remain extremely costly and a major bottleneck in medicine.
- He believes AI’s impact depends on access to open, shared datasets.
- Proprietary, walled-off data will limit progress in transforming healthcare.
TAKEAWAYS
- Biology may soon be approached more like an engineering problem than a purely exploratory one.
- Drug development still faces major cost and time barriers, especially in clinical validation.
- Data sharing is central to making AI useful in biomedical research.
- Collaboration and openness may matter more than ownership for future medical breakthroughs.