Priscilla Chan (centre) is the co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is taking an interdisciplinary approach to tackling disease. Credit: Mike Windle/Getty for Vanity Fair

Some of the richest people in history are using charitable donations to explore fresh approaches to funding scientific research. Their ranks could soon grow: in the next year or so, initial public offerings by some of the biggest artificial-intelligence companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, both in San Francisco, California, could see the companies valued at more than US$1 trillion apiece, making hundreds of their employees millionaires in the process.

How tech billionaires are disrupting biomedical science

Many of the new philanthropists are adopting an engineering mindset, focusing their donations on technological approaches to solving societal problems.…