Patrick Hsu

Hsu received A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he was an early pioneer of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technologies.⁠[1]

In 2021 Hsu co-founded Arc Institute, an independent nonprofit research organization in Palo Alto, California, with Silvana Konermann and Patrick CollisonPatrick CollisonPatrick Collison is an entrepreneur who grew up in Ireland. In 2010 he cofounded the payments and financial infrastructure company Stripe with his brother John Collison and serves as its chief executive; he is also a cofounder of the biomedical research organization Arc Institute and has been a director of Meta since 2025.Open the full entry, with whom he had worked on Fast Grants. Arc partners with Stanford University, the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry, and the University of California, San Francisco, and aims to accelerate scientific progress, understand the root causes of complex diseases and bring breakthroughs into real-world impact; Hsu is a co-founder and core investigator.⁠[2]

On September 15, 2025, a16zAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry released the podcast episode “Faster Science, Better Drugs,” hosted by Andreessen Horowitz general partner Erik TorenbergErik TorenbergErik Torenberg is a tech entrepreneur, investor, and podcast host who is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he invests and is responsible for marketing and the ecosystem network. He was the first employee of Product Hunt and founded or co-founded On Deck, Village Global, and Turpentine, long combining founder communities, expert content, and early-stage investing.Open the full entry, with Hsu and Jorge CondeJorge CondeJorge Conde is a biotechnology entrepreneur and a general partner on the Bio + Health team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).Open the full entry, a general partner on a16z’s Bio + Health team, as guests.⁠[3][4]

The episode asked whether science can move as fast as software, discussing Arc’s “virtual cells” effort to simulate biology with foundation models and guide experiments, why research is slow, what an AlphaFold-style breakthrough in cell biology could look like, how AI might improve drug discovery, hype versus substance in AI for biology, clinical bottlenecks and capital intensity, and how GLP-1 drugs illustrate the path from scientific discovery to major business and health impact.⁠[3][4]

On June 8, 2026, Notion co-founder Ivan Zhao announced that Hsu had joined Notion’s first board of directors as an independent member; at the time Hsu taught at Stanford and invested at Thrive.⁠[5]

Hsu’s lab works on biological design at the intersection of biology and machine learning, including the Evo series of genome foundation models and programmable DNA recombinases. He serves on AmgenAmgenAmgen Inc. is an American company that discovers, develops, manufactures and delivers innovative medicines. Incorporated in California in 1980, it has its principal executive offices in Thousand Oaks, and its common stock trades on The Nasdaq Global Select Market.Open the full entry’s scientific advisory board and the board of Stylus Medicine, and co-founded the science funding program Fast Grants. His recognitions include The New York Times Good Tech Award, ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry 30 Under 30, MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35, and awards from the Rainwater Foundation and Amgen.⁠[1]

Arc Institute: Official website: https://arcinstitute.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

X: Public account: https://x.com/pdhsu (opens in a new window).⁠[4]