The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the standalone company founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan that's tasked with giving away the couple's billions, is making its first acquisition.
CZI is acquiring Meta, a startup that "developed an AI that helps scientists read, understand and prioritize millions of scientific papers," according to a Facebook post.
The hope is that the technology will help those in the scientific community more easily discover and share research. "Meta will help scientists learn from others' discoveries in real time, find key papers that may have gone unnoticed, or even predict where their field is headed," the Facebook post reads.
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CZI says Meta will eventually be free. The company raised $6 million in venture funding back in November 2015, and has raised more than $7 million in total, according to Crunchbase. The acquisition price was not disclosed.
Zuckerberg and Chan pledged more than a year ago to give away nearly all of their wealth during their lifetime, and pledged $3 billion to curing all disease back in September. Acquiring Meta aligns with that mission.
—By KURT WAGNER, Recode.net.
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