AI-pharma deal ledger
Every AI-related pharma deal I track, with what was actually disclosed: the upfront, the headline “biobucks” and the source. Most of the money in the headlines is contingent, and most platform deals disclose nothing at all.
- Deals logged
- 28
- Upfront disclosed
- 6 of 28
- Paid up front per headline dollar
- 5.4¢
- Platform licences with any figure disclosed
- 2 of 16
Upfront against headline
Every deal that discloses a headline value, on one linear scale. “>” marks a headline announced as “more than”.
Upfront Headline value
What gets disclosed, by deal type
Number of deals per type, split by the most each one disclosed.
Upfront disclosed Headline only No figures
The ledger
One row per signed agreement between a drug developer and a counterparty where AI is the subject or the stated engine of the deal. Milestone payments inside existing deals and non-binding frameworks are left out; venture rounds, IPOs and other financings without a pharma party are listed separately under Financings, below. Headline means the total potential value as announced (upfront plus milestones, excluding royalties). Figures are left blank when they were not disclosed; nothing is estimated. Each row links to the press release, or to trade coverage of it when the release could not be found. The ledger starts in January 2026 and is not exhaustive; it is updated weekly and summarised in the first issue of each month.
| Date | Deal | Type | Upfront | Headline | Royalties | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GSK · Chai Discovery Access to Chai’s protein folding and design models across GSK’s pipeline, signed after GSK’s own wet-lab tests found binders to every target it tried. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Press release Issue October 13, 2026 | |
| Genentech · Earendil Labs Earendil discovers bispecific antibodies against pre-agreed oncology target pairs; Genentech takes them through clinical development. | Discovery collaboration | $55M | > $1.5B | yes | Trade press Issue September 29, 2026 | |
| Boehringer Ingelheim · Envisagenics Research and option deal to validate tumour-specific targets from alternative-splicing data found with the SpliceCore AI platform. | Discovery collaboration | — | > $1B | yes | Trade press Issue September 29, 2026 | |
| argenx · BenchSci Two-year enterprise licence for the EMET agentic research environment across preclinical R&D, chosen in an internal bake-off. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Press release Issue September 8, 2026 | |
| Boehringer Ingelheim · Owkin Licence for the K Pro agentic AI scientist plus multimodal oncology data, with new immunology data to be generated. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Press release Issue September 8, 2026 | |
| Takeda · Weave Bio AI regulatory-writing platform deployed across 14 development programmes, from IND drafting to health-authority questions. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Trade press Issue September 8, 2026 | |
| Bristol Myers Squibb · Chai Discovery Chai’s folding and de novo design models applied to antibody discovery across BMS’s portfolio, feeding a continuously learning discovery system. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Press release | |
| Novo Nordisk · Amazon Web Services AWS becomes preferred cloud and AI partner, with a London co-innovation hub for discovery and agentic operations. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Press release Issue August 11, 2026 | |
| Pathos AI · Alphamab An AI-native company in-licenses a Phase III TROP2/HER3 bispecific ADC (JSKN016) for all territories outside Greater China. Headline is $125M upfront plus up to $2,093M in milestones. | Asset licence | $125M | $2.22B | yes | Trade press Issue August 4, 2026 | |
| Pathos AI · AstraZeneca Co-exclusive licence for AstraZeneca’s preclinical ERα PROTAC (AZD4241), with Pathos running early clinical development. | Asset licence | — | — | no | Press release Issue August 4, 2026 | |
| GSK · Relation GSK pays for large-scale human cellular perturbation data to train models, rather than for access to Relation’s model. | Data deal | — | $110M | no | Press release Issue August 4, 2026 | |
| argenx · Chai Discovery Early access to Chai’s de novo antibody design platform for immunology targets. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Press release Issue July 22, 2026 | |
| Novartis · Chai Discovery Access to Chai’s models, including Chai-3, for antibody discovery across multiple targets. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Press release | |
| China Medical System · Insilico Medicine Joint CNS programme on a mechanism found with PandaOmics, taken through IND-enabling studies before CMS leads the clinic. Announced as up to RMB 1.2 billion in milestones. | Discovery collaboration | — | $177M | yes | Press release Issue July 22, 2026 | |
| Takeda · Insilico Medicine Insilico discovers molecules to agreed criteria with its Pharma.AI platform; Takeda holds worldwide rights to what comes out. The $60M is “upfront and near-term payments”, not upfront alone. | Discovery collaboration | $60M | $600M | yes | Trade press Issue July 7, 2026 | |
| Novartis · Orionis Biosciences Renewed and expanded molecular-glue collaboration on the Allo-Glue platform and its AI-driven discovery engine. Headline is $40M upfront plus up to $1.4B in milestones. | Discovery collaboration | $40M | $1.44B | yes | Press release Issue June 16, 2026 | |
| Sanofi · Owkin Five-year K Pro licence, with Owkin building purpose-built R&D agents for Sanofi. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Press release Issue June 16, 2026 | |
| Pfizer · Chai Discovery Licence for Chai’s platform including early access to Chai-3, plus a custom model trained on Pfizer data. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Press release | |
| Incyte · Genesis Molecular AI Expanded collaboration adding at least five discovery programmes on the GEMS platform, with Incyte data used to train it. The $120M upfront is $80M cash and a $40M equity investment. | Discovery collaboration | $120M | > $1B | yes | Press release | |
| Incyte · Edison Scientific The Kosmos AI scientist deployed for Incyte’s R&D teams. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Press release Issue May 26, 2026 | |
| AstraZeneca · Owkin Three-year K Pro licence, with Owkin building competitive-intelligence agents inside AstraZeneca’s systems. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Press release Issue May 19, 2026 | |
| AstraZeneca · Immunai Extends use of the AMICA-OS immune-system models in oncology clinical development through 2027. Up to $37.5M over 2026–2027. | Platform licence | — | $37.5M | no | Press release | |
| Merck · Google Cloud Multi-year deal to roll Gemini Enterprise and agentic AI across R&D, manufacturing and commercial, with Google engineers on site. Up to $1B. | Platform licence | — | $1B | no | Trade press Issue May 19, 2026 | |
| Novo Nordisk · OpenAI Company-wide AI partnership from R&D to supply chain, with workforce upskilling and full rollout targeted for end of 2026. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Trade press Issue May 13, 2026 | |
| Eli Lilly · Insilico Medicine Exclusive worldwide licence to preclinical oral therapeutics from Insilico, plus joint programmes on Lilly-selected targets. | Asset licence | $115M | $2.75B | yes | Press release Issue April 13, 2026 | |
| Takeda · Iambic Therapeutics Multi-year small-molecule programmes in oncology and GI/inflammation, plus access to the NeuralPLexer model. Upfront, research and technology-access payments confirmed but not quantified. | Discovery collaboration | — | > $1.7B | yes | Press release | |
| AstraZeneca · Modella AI AstraZeneca acquires its oncology AI partner, bringing pathology foundation models and agents in-house. | M&A | — | — | no | Trade press | |
| Eli Lilly · Chai Discovery Lilly uses Chai’s platform to design biologics, and Chai builds a model trained only on Lilly data. | Platform licence | — | — | no | Press release |
Financings
Money raised by companies and programmes where AI is the stated engine of drug discovery or biology research: venture rounds, IPOs and public or philanthropic funding. Kept apart from the deals above because no drug developer is buying anything, so none of it counts toward the figures at the top. Amounts are in US dollars as announced; for a round announced in another currency, the dollar figure in the announcement is used and the original is noted. IPOs are listed when terms are set, and the amount is added when they price. Reports of talks are left out. Financings have been logged since October 2026. Download CSV
| Date | Company | Type | Amount | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Undecimal Bio Seed co-led by 4BIO Capital and IQ Capital for DELiveri, an AI-enabled platform that finds conjugates to carry siRNA to cells beyond the liver. Announced as €16M ($18M). | Venture round | $18M | Trade press Issue October 13, 2026 | |
| Iambic Therapeutics Nasdaq IPO (IAM) for an AI-native small-molecule developer with a clinical cancer asset. Not yet priced. Terms set October 8: 9.4M shares at $15–17, about $150M at the midpoint. | IPO | — | Filing Issue October 13, 2026 | |
| Rivercell Seed led by HV, with HCVC, Alven and Bpifrance Digital Venture, to train a virtual-cell model on Rivercell’s own time-resolved cell data. | Venture round | $25M | Trade press Issue October 13, 2026 | |
| Biohub Virtual Biology Initiative Funding, data, compute and measurement technology for open, AI-ready cell data, from Biohub, DOE, NIH, Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs and Meta. No pharma funder. Mixes new and existing resources: at least $800M is new (tech partners $300M, DOE more than $500M over five years). | Public & philanthropic | $1.8B | Press release Issue October 13, 2026 |