CZI LLC, Meta, and Wild Rides
Will bioRxiv and medRxiv prove as fungible as Meta once was to CZI LLC?
Follow up: Please take the two-question survey about whether bioRxiv/medRxiv would be better off disassociating themselves from CZI LLC.
In 2020, while covering what were to become the bizarre final days of Meta.org, the Canadian text-mining and machine learning startup acquired by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative LLC (CZI LLC) in 2017, I wrote about another round of funding going to bioRxiv and medRxiv from CZI LLC:
. . . the funding of medRxiv and bioRxiv by CZI does not look entirely philanthropic, but more like a commercial deal of some sort.
This was partially driven by Cold Spring Harbor Labs noting in their press release that the new funding would provide content to “CZI’s research discovery service Meta, which includes preprints from bioRxiv, now includes preprints from medRxiv.”
Basically, CZI was funding the preprint servers to acquire content — an exchange of value rather than something philanthropic.
In yesterday’s post, I speculated that by CZI LLC establishing a non-profit (opeRxiv Corp.) as an umbrella for bioRxiv and medRxiv, and installing a CZI LLC employee as Board chair, CZI LLC had in effect acquired bioRxiv and medRxiv outright. Lots of little details line up, making the case pretty strong.
Given the history of Mark Zuckerberg’s approach to acquisitions, the treatment of Meta is worth reviewing for clues as to how things might go for the assets now held within openRxiv Corp.