- Mark Zuckerberg and his wife were in the delivery room when they wrote a letter announcing their foundation.
- This was back in 2015, when Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan had their daughter, Maxima.
- The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is now investing in efforts to try to eliminate all human disease.
Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan say they drafted the announcement for their jointly named foundation in a hospital delivery room.
The story dates back to 2015, when Chan and Zuckerberg welcomed their eldest daughter, Maxima.
In December 2015, Zuckerberg posted a note on Facebook titled “A letter to our daughter.” The post, which began with the words “Dear Max,” outlined the couple’s hopes for their daughter’s future, and announced the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
“Our initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities,” Zuckerberg and Chan wrote. “We will give 99% of our Facebook shares — currently about $45 billion — during our lives to advance this mission.”
Zuckerberg and Chan told neuroscientist and podcast host Andrew Huberman they were working on the final version of the letter right before their child was born. The episode aired on Monday.
“I’m like, sitting in the hospital delivery room, finishing editing the letter that we were going to publish to announce CZI,” Zuckerberg told Huberman.
Chan said launching the initiative was part of the couple’s “baby checklist.”
“Some people think that is an exaggeration. It was not. We really were editing the final draft,” Chan said.
Eight years later, Zuckerberg and Chan now have two more daughters: August and Aurelia. And the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is now investing in moves to try to rid the world of all human disease by 2100.
Chan and Zuckerberg said in a September 19 statement that their foundation is developing an AI-driven computing system that researchers can use to populate a comprehensive database of cells.
This sprawling cell catalog will allow medical researchers to create a “predictive model” of how healthy and diseased cells behave, the couple said.
Chan said in the statement that their foundation’s computing system aims to give researchers new tech tools to use that are rooted in generative AI, and that can “accelerate efforts to cure, prevent, or manage all disease.”
A representative for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
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