Thursday, November 6, 2025

Global Hackathon by Merck and Boltz Sets New Standard for AI-Driven Protein Structure Prediction

Merck and the Boltz team have set a new benchmark in AI-powered protein structure prediction with their global M-Boltz Hackathon.
This hybrid event, hosted in Darmstadt, Germany, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., united scientists, engineers, and innovators across continents to shape the future of open, AI-driven drug discovery.

Boltz – an open-source AI model for predicting protein structures and binding affinities – has quickly become one of the most sought-after tools in pharmaceutical research. Its strength lies in speed, accuracy, and accessibility, making advanced protein science available to students, researchers, and industry professionals alike.

“We are more than participants – we are co-innovators. Through close collaboration with global partners, we are strengthening both Boltz and our in-house research platforms,” said Philipp Harbach, Global Head of Group Digital Innovation at Merck.

The hackathon was powered by leading technology partners including AWS, NVIDIA, Hugging Face, and the MIT Jameel Clinic.
AWS provided data infrastructure and Amazon SageMaker for scalable model deployment, NVIDIA contributed mentors and prizes, and Hugging Face supported an open leaderboard and ongoing collaboration within its open-source community.

Participants tackled three main challenges:

1. Enhancing Boltz predictions for antibody–antigen complexes and allosteric small-molecule binders.
2. Improving the computational scalability of the Boltz-2 model.
3. Open-ended contributions to the codebase or curated datasets for training and evaluation.

The winning teams, announced at the 7th Molecular Machine Learning Conference (MoML 2025) at MIT, achieved breakthroughs in antibody structure prediction, allosteric binder discovery, and model performance optimization.

“It’s inspiring to see researchers from different sectors and continents working side by side on some of the most complex challenges in biomolecular science – open, collaborative, and visionary,” said Gabriele Corso, co-creator of Boltz.

Through initiatives like the M-Boltz Hackathon, Merck strengthens its position at the intersection of AI, open-source innovation, and drug discovery, paving the way for a new era in biotechnology research.