If humankind ever gets drugs that cure cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, we might have AI to thank. Because each attempt to make a drug requires vast amounts of data, money, and experimentation, biotech companies have bet big on machine-learning models to develop brand-new ones and help match patients to the right medications for their biochemistry.

Google raised the stakes yesterday when its DeepMind AI research laboratory, in partnership with Isomorphic Labs, released AlphaFold 3, an AI model that “predicts the structure and interactions of all of life’s molecules.”

Why is that a big deal? Google is hoping to improve on the current drug discovery process, which has a 90% failure rate, largely because scientists have a limited map of all the tiny components of the human body and the ways diseases interact with them.

• Explaining the potential of AI pharma development generally, the CEO of a drug startup told the MIT Technology Review, “All of Big Pharma taken together…has an ingredient list of at most 10 million molecules to build drugs from.” But, he explained, the number of molecules that exist is thought to be a decillion, a number with 33 zeros rather than 7. And that’s where the computational power of machine-learning models comes in.
• If the AI can predict how a proposed drug will affect the body, it can find promising candidates more quickly.

AlphaFold 3 will allow researchers to test more hypotheses before committing to the slow and expensive testing protocols that still need to be carried out IRL before a new drug gets approved. Access to the tool will be free for noncommercial use.

What about AI hallucinations? What’s bad for your report on Richard III may be great for drug R&D. Scientists have said that AI’s norm-shattering conjectures are sometimes fruitful.

The fine print: While independent scientists hailed AlphaFold 3 as a significant step forward, the system is “not good at predicting how proteins can change shape in living systems in response to their environment,” the Guardian said, which could impact drug efficacy in the real world.—HVL

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FTX’s customers are getting their money back—plus interest. This probably isn’t an outcome anyone would have bet on when the crypto exchange imploded in 2022 (except maybe FTX’s notoriously risk-embracing founder, Sam Bankman-Fried), but attorneys for the bankrupt company say they’ve found enough cash to pay back its customers with interest. The recovery of the crypto market plus the ability to sell assets like a stake in AI company Anthropic will give FTX as much as $16.3 billion to distribute, the lawyers said. The plan still has to be okayed by a judge, but current CEO John Ray, who took over FTX after its collapse, noted, “In any bankruptcy, this is just an unbelievable result.” However, there won’t be money left for the investors that backed FTX.

Uber profits hit the brakes. Last year, Uber boasted its first full-year profit since going public. But yesterday, the company reported a surprise loss for the first quarter of 2024, dashing investors’ hopes for steady profits and sending its stock way down. The disappointing numbers suggested Uber’s growth has slowed and reflected the toll that constant legal battles with regulators are taking on the company’s finances. Meanwhile, Uber’s smaller rival Lyft appears to have its foot on the gas pedal. It posted better-than-expected quarterly results on Tuesday and saw a stock bump yesterday.

Microsoft is investing $3.3 billion in a Wisconsin AI hub. The software giant plans to put the cash toward creating an AI data center. President Biden was on hand in Wisconsin yesterday to help announce the news—and not just to tout a big investment that’s expected to create jobs. The president also likely wanted to tweak his Republican rival Donald Trump, who during his own presidency announced a $10 billion investment by Foxconn to create a factory on the same land, a plan that never came to fruition.

The trial of the cryptic investor who allegedly masterminded one of Wall Street’s strangest and most far-reaching white-collar crimes began yesterday, three years after his firm, Archegos, imploded in a matter of days.

Bill Hwang, a Korean pastor’s son who had an epic Wall Street rise and an equally epic fall, now faces 11 counts of racketeering, conspiracy, and fraud relating to an alleged “pump-and-brag” scheme in which Hwang—through Archegos, his family office—inflated the value of stocks using billions of dollars borrowed from banks.

• At one point, Archegos’s stock portfolio was worth over $100 billion. But when the firm collapsed over a little more than a week in 2021, it wiped out all of that value—including over half the value of media conglomerate Viacom.
• Credit Suisse also took a $5.5 billion hit when Archegos went belly-up, contributing to the bank’s 2023 demise.

Why Wall Street is watching: 1) Hwang got his start in the business working for a legendary hedge fund manager 2) the outcome could impact how family office funds are regulated and 3) Hwang’s strategy wasn’t profitable. Even the judge presiding over the case admitted to being confused about what Hwang was trying to do, and if prosecutors can’t explain it, they might have a hard time convincing a jury he acted criminally.—CC

The lithium boom. One EV needs 10k smartphone batteries’ worth of lithium, and forecasts expect 350m+ EVs by 2030. Well, EnergyX can extract 300% more lithium than today’s methods. That’s earned them a $50m investment from GM, a $5m DOE grant, and acquired land with ~5.5m tons of lithium. Now they’re accepting shareholders for a limited time. Invest here.

In a move that feels like it was pitched by an angry middle-school student council, a German political party said it would propose a government price cap on doner kebabs, a popular street food in the country.

Around $7.5 billion worth of doner kebabs—a Turkish dish that involves tossing some shaved meat + fixins on a flatbread—are sold every year in Germany. But young people and some politicians are complaining that the formerly cheap meal is now almost out of reach for ordinary Germans.

• Some businesses have raised kebab prices from ~$4 two years ago to nearly $11, according to Germany’s left-wing Die Linke party.
• The party wants a cap of $5.30 per sandwich and for the German government to subsidize the popular dish, proposing that every household get a voucher for their daily doner.

Foodflation: While this might seem like a political stunt, people get riled up about about the price of their favorite noshes inflating. Last year, the Italian government called an emergency meeting to discuss pasta prices rising over 16% two months in a row. French President Emmanuel Macron has made statements about shielding the baguette from rising energy costs. And US East Coasters were not happy when they saw the exorbitant price tag on a Double Quarter Pounder at a McD’s in Connecticut.—MM

Stat: There’s one major attraction Americans are flocking to Europe to see: Taylor Swift. The European leg of her Eras Tours kicks off today in Paris, and her concerts will bring five times more US luxury travelers to the city than the upcoming Olympics, high-end travel agency Embark Beyond told Bloomberg. And it’s not just the richest Swifties willing to use their fortnight’s vacation to catch the show: The Associated Press reports that some American fans are following the singer to Europe after realizing that stricter restrictions on ticket prices made it cheaper to see her there. In Paris, 20% of tickets were snapped up by Americans, and when Swift performs in Stockholm, 10,000 Americans are expected to attend.

Quote: “[It] was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.”

Apologies for hitting you with that mental image while you’re trying to enjoy your morning coffee, but don’t blame us—blame the New York Times, which dug up a 2012 deposition in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said a doctor believed that’s what happened to him. Kennedy, now an independent candidate for president despite the objections of some members of his famous family, recounted in his deposition that a doctor told him that a dark spot on scans of his brain was a deceased parasite. In the deposition, Kennedy said the incident caused cognitive problems, but he told the NYT he has fully recovered and there are no aftereffects.

Read: Your phone can tell when you’re depressed. (Vox)