{"entity":{"id":"boltz","kind":"technology","name":"Boltz-1 / Boltz-2 (MIT, open)","aka":[],"tldr":"Open-source structure models that match AlphaFold 3, with Boltz-2 also predicting how strongly a drug binds.","summary":"Boltz is an open-source family of diffusion-based structure models from MIT that reproduces AlphaFold 3-level accuracy for proteins, nucleic acids and small molecules. Boltz-1 (2024) was released under the permissive MIT licence, giving academic and commercial groups a freely usable alternative to closed models. Boltz-2 (2025), developed with Recursion, added an affinity head that predicts how strongly a small molecule binds, approaching the accuracy of physics-based free energy perturbation (FEP) at a fraction of the compute cost, which matters for ranking candidate cancer drugs. Affinity accuracy varies by target class, so predictions still need experimental confirmation for a new protein family. For a newcomer: Boltz is the free model that matches AlphaFold 3 and can also estimate how tightly a drug will bind.","status":"emerging","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Boltz-1 bioRxiv 2024","url":"https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.19.624167v1"}],"tags":["foundation-model","structure"],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":["drug-discovery","ai-computation"],"technologies":["ai-drug-design"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":["recursion"],"institutions":["broad-institute"],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"principle":"Diffusion structure model with affinity head.","strengths":["Open","Affinity prediction"],"limitations":["Affinity accuracy varies by target class"],"since":2024},"route":"/technologies/boltz/","neighbours":{"section":[{"id":"ai-computation","kind":"section","name":"AI & Computation","route":"/fronts/ai-computation/"},{"id":"drug-discovery","kind":"section","name":"Drug Discovery Platforms","route":"/fronts/drug-discovery/"}],"technology":[{"id":"ai-drug-design","kind":"technology","name":"AI-driven drug & target discovery","route":"/technologies/ai-drug-design/"}],"company":[{"id":"recursion","kind":"company","name":"Recursion Pharmaceuticals","route":"/companies/recursion/"}],"institution":[{"id":"broad-institute","kind":"institution","name":"Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard","route":"/institutions/broad-institute/"}],"roadmap":[{"id":"ai-oncology-roadmap","kind":"roadmap","name":"AI in oncology roadmap: pattern readers → foundation models → agents in the workflow","route":"/roadmaps/ai-oncology-roadmap/"},{"id":"drug-discovery-roadmap","kind":"roadmap","name":"Drug discovery roadmap: screening in mice → maps of dependency → designing in silico","route":"/roadmaps/drug-discovery-roadmap/"},{"id":"virtual-cell","kind":"roadmap","name":"Virtual cell roadmap: from bulk omics to a predictive model of a cancer cell","route":"/roadmaps/virtual-cell/"}]}}