Arc Institute Launches 2026 Virtual Cell Challenge
The challenge requires models to predict perturbation responses in previously unseen cell contexts.
Arc Institute announced that the 2026 Virtual Cell Challenge is now open for submissions with an active leaderboard. The task requires models to perform zero-shot prediction of how cells respond to perturbations in contexts absent from any Challenge-specific training data. Patrick Collison noted the $100,000 grand prize sponsored by NVIDIA, 10xGenomics, and UltimaGenomics. The institute's site states that no training set is being released and that the evaluation dataset is more expansive than last year's.
The 2026 Virtual Cell Challenge has begun! Submissions and the leaderboard are now open. This year's task: multi-context generalization and zero-shot prediction. Models will need to predict perturbation responses in cellular contexts with no Challenge-specific training data.
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1 postThe 2026 @arcinstitute Virtual Cell Challenge just launched. The grand prize is $100,000, sponsored by @NVIDIA, @10xGenomics, and @UltimaGenomics. There's a lot of interest in virtual cells these days: ML models of cells that can complement wet lab experiments. (You'll always…