---
id: "2025-02-19-evo-2-genome-model"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-02-19-evo-2-genome-model/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2025-02-19"
date_precision: day
category: science
importance: 3
confidence: high
status: [Result confirmed]
verification: Peer-reviewed
sources: 2
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-02-19-evo-2-genome-model/

# Evo 2: a 40B-parameter genome language model trained on DNA from all domains of life

Arc Institute, Stanford and NVIDIA released Evo 2 (7B and 40B parameters) in Feb 2025, trained on genomes across bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. It predicts variant effects and generates genome-scale sequences. Published in Nature on 4 Mar 2026, and used to design the first AI-generated viable phage genomes.

## Key facts
- Open weights, 7B and 40B parameters, 1M-base context
- Nature publication 4 Mar 2026 (DOI 10.1038/s41586-026-10176-5)
- 88k+ GitHub downloads and 8M+ API requests in its first year, per Arc

## What happened

Arc released one of the largest fully open biology models, trained on trillions of DNA bases.

## Why it matters

It made genome-scale generative design possible, most notably whole viable bacteriophages.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): in its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): in its training data
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): in its training data
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): in its training data

## Sources

1. [Arc Institute: Evo 2 one year later](https://arcinstitute.org/news/evo-2-one-year-later) (arcinstitute.org, official)
2. [Wikipedia: Evo (AI)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_(AI)) (en.wikipedia.org, discussion)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created

## Related

- 2025-09-12: [First AI-generated complete genomes](https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-09-12-ai-generated-phage-genomes/index.md)