Eight AI deals in 2025: Discover where industry leaders are betting big

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the biotechnology landscape, and as it does, we are seeing more and more strategic collaborations and partnerships focused on the technology. These partnerships make use of AI to analyze complex biological data, speed up drug discovery, and improve the design of clinical trials. By combining AI’s data-crunching capabilities with the scientific expertise of biotech researchers, these collaborations are ultimately helping to make the development of new therapies faster, more accurate, and more personalized than ever before. In this article, we look at eight key AI biotech deals that have been made so far in 2025. 

AstraZeneca and CSPC Pharmaceuticals  

In June, AstraZeneca once again turned to the Chinese company CSPC Pharmaceuticals, with whom it initially entered into an exclusive license agreement in October 2024 for an early-stage cardiovascular disease drug. This latest biotech deal, however, involves the discovery and development of novel oral candidates leveraging CSPC’s AI-driven, dual-engine efficient drug discovery platform to analyze the binding patterns of target proteins with existing compound molecules, with the aim of selecting “highly effective small molecules with excellent developability.” 

Under the terms of the AI partnership, the two companies have agreed to discover and develop preclinical candidates for multiple targets with the potential to treat diseases across chronic indications, including a preclinical small molecule oral therapy for immunological diseases. The deal also stated that the research would be carried out by CSPC in Shijiazhuang City, and AstraZeneca would have rights to exercise options for exclusive licenses to develop and commercialize worldwide candidates identified under the agreement. 

Along with receiving a $110 million upfront payment, CSPC is eligible to receive up to $1.62 billion in potential development milestone payments and up to $3.6 billion in sales milestone payments.  

According to AstraZeneca, this collaboration further strengthens the big pharma’s presence in China following the announcement of its $2.5 billion investment in a research and development (R&D) hub in Beijing earlier this year.

Genentech and Orionis Biosciences  

Involving the increasingly popular modality of molecular glue medicines, Genentech inked an oncology collaboration with Orionis Biosciences in May 2025 leveraging Orionis’ Allo-Glue platform, which integrates multiple technologies to advance the discovery and design of molecular glues for highly challenging disease targets. 

The biotech’s platform works by combining advanced chemical biology tools, engineered cellular assay systems, custom-built high-throughput robotic automation, and specialized AI infrastructure. The AI-driven chemistry stack integrates predictive modeling, generative design, and a compound interrogation engine operating across a vast chemical space. Collectively, these capabilities accelerate the systematic discovery and simultaneous optimization for potency, selectivity, and synthetic accessibility of monovalent molecular glue modalities. 

The terms of the partnership agreement stated that Orionis would be responsible for the discovery and optimization of molecular glues, while Genentech would be responsible for subsequent later-stage preclinical and clinical development, regulatory filing, and commercialization of these small molecules. Meanwhile, the financial terms included an upfront payment of $105 million, as well as potential research, development, commercial, and net sales milestone payments of potentially more than $2 billion.  

This deal signaled the second multi-year collaboration between the two companies, with the first one coming in 2023 to discover novel small-molecule medicines for challenging targets in major disease areas, including oncology and neurodegeneration. 

Eli Lilly and Superluminal Medicines 

As the obesity field continues to attract enormous interest and Eli Lilly seeks to protect its hold on the market, the pharma giant signed a $1.3 billion deal in August with Superluminal Medicines, a drug discovery biotech company integrating AI/machine learning (ML), protein dynamics, and structural biology to rapidly unlock the most challenging G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). 

GPCRs are a historically challenging target class, where functional selectivity and structural complexity demand next-generation computational solutions. As Superluminal pointed out in its press release when it raised $120 million last year – which Eli Lilly participated in – around 35% of all drugs target GPCRs, but 70% of the more than 800 GPCRs are currently undrugged and only 138 have experimental active-state protein structures. 

The partnership between Eli Lilly and Superluminal involves the advancement of small molecule therapies targeting undisclosed GPCR targets relevant to cardiometabolic diseases and obesity. The collaboration intends to leverage Superluminal’s structure-based drug discovery platform in combination with Eli Lilly’s small molecule development and commercialization expertise to rapidly advance potentially life-changing medicines. 

Superluminal’s platform has achieved a deep integration of AI/ML with biology, structural biology, and chemistry expertise. The predict-design-test architecture accurately models protein shapes and designs highly selective compounds to target the precise structural change for therapeutic effect, and its discovery engine is powered by an industry-leading pharmacokinetic and toxicology in silico prediction capability. 

Novo Nordisk and Deep Apple Therapeutics  

As the other big pharma giant seeking to keep hold of its share of the obesity market, Novo Nordisk entered into a research collaboration and license agreement in June with AI drug discovery company Deep Apple Therapeutics to discover, develop, and commercialize oral small molecule therapies directed at a novel non-incretin GPCR target for cardiometabolic diseases, including obesity. 

The collaboration involves Deep Apple discovering and optimizing compounds using its drug discovery platform, which combines machine-learning-powered virtual screening with structural biology enabled by cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to dramatically improve speed, quality, and novelty in lead generation and optimization. Novo Nordisk will then receive exclusive global rights to develop, manufacture, and commercialize the resulting compounds and products in all indications.  

The agreement also stated that both companies would collaborate on the research plan, with program handoff to Novo Nordisk occurring immediately prior to the start of investigational new drug (IND)-enabling studies. 

In total, Deep Apple is eligible to receive up to $812 million in payments, as well as potential royalties on sales of any products that emerge from the collaboration. 

Eli Lilly and Creyon Bio 

In April 2025, Eli Lilly entered into another AI partnership, this time with biotech Creyon Bio, in a deal focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of novel RNA-targeted oligonucleotide therapies for a broad range of diseases.  

As a part of the collaboration, Creyon will leverage its “industry-first” AI-Powered Oligo Engineering Engine to design and optimize new drug candidates for Lilly’s named targets. Bringing AI technology into the mix here means that this should happen on time scales not previously achievable in nucleic acid drug development, as Creyon’s technology enables a more systematic and cost-effective approach to designing safe and active oligonucleotides that moves beyond traditional methods. 

The agreement stated that Eli Lilly would be granted an exclusive license to lead candidates for each target. If the pharma giant then decides to move forward after certain milestones are achieved, it will be responsible for further research, development, and commercialization. 

As well as receiving a $13 million upfront payment under the agreement – including cash and the purchase of Creyon equity – Creyon is also eligible to receive over $1 billion in development and commercialization payments provided certain milestones are achieved. 

Takeda and Nabla Bio 

Just this month, Nabla Bio, a company pioneering de novo therapeutics design with generative AI, announced a new, multi-year research collaboration with Takeda, with whom it has collaborated since 2022.  

This second collaboration deploys Nabla Bio’s biomolecular design platform, Joint Atomic Model (JAM), across Takeda’s early-stage development programs, and will include, but is not limited to, de novo design of antibodies in parallel for multiple targets, multispecifics, challenging targets, and other custom therapeutics. According to Nabla Bio, “JAM has shown success rates in de novo design across a wide range of targets, including generating picomolar binders to difficult target classes like G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) in a true zero-shot setting.” 

Under the terms of the agreement, Nabla Bio will receive double-digit millions in upfront and research cost payments and is eligible to receive success-based payments that may exceed $1 billion in total. 

Halda Therapeutics and VantAI 

In August, Halda Therapeutics entered into a strategic research collaboration with VantAI that could be worth over $1 billion to discover next-generation RIPTAC medicines across cancer and immunology indications.  

Under the partnership, VantAI is leveraging its Neo-1 foundation model and NeoLink high-throughput structural proteomics platform to rapidly identify and validate novel, context-specific target-effector pairs. These pairs will then feed directly into Halda’s RIPTAC development pipeline, which harnesses a distinctive “hold-and-kill” mechanism to achieve potent, cell-selective effects in disease-relevant tissues.  

Earlier this year, Halda Therapeutics brought the first-ever RIPTAC into clinical trials, aiming to advance the next generation of induced proximity therapies. This AI biotech deal with VantAI could now give Halda a source of target-effector pairs for its next wave of prospects.  

Meanwhile, VantAI’s application of its platform to RIPTACs follows work on similar modalities; the AI company has already partnered with Blueprint Medicines and Bristol Myers Squibb on molecular glues, for example.  

Eli Lilly and Juvena Therapeutics  

Also in June, Eli Lilly decided to strengthen its muscle health R&D with a global licensing and multi-target research collaboration with Juvena Therapeutics, a company pioneering tissue restorative biologics for chronic muscle and metabolic diseases. The deal reportedly included an upfront fee and more than $650 million in milestone payments.  

The partnership will leverage Juvena’s JuvNET, which, according to Juvena, is the world’s first, fully integrated, AI-enabled screening platform for mapping the therapeutic potential of stem cell-secreted proteins. The collaboration intends to identify muscle-targeting drug candidates from Juvena’s library of human stem-cell secreted proteins for improved body composition and muscle health. 

Eli Lilly’s interest in drugs that drive muscle growth comes in parallel to the explosion in demand for GLP-1 medicines, which can cause people to lose lean mass, theoretically affecting physical function and increasing the risk of falls and fractures. Therefore, having another drug that could help individuals maintain and even improve their muscle mass and function would certainly benefit the big pharma company, which also acquired Versanis Bio in 2023 to gain ownership of a monoclonal antibody that blocks a receptor to stimulate skeletal muscle growth. 

AI in biotech: A growing trend 

It is no secret that the use of AI in biotech is becoming increasingly popular, as evidenced by the number of big deals made so far in 2025. Indeed, the AI in biotechnology market, which stood at $3.23 billion in 2024, is projected to reach $7.75 billion by 2029, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.1% in the forecast period.  

With this in mind, we can certainly expect more AI partnerships to come toward the end of this year and throughout 2026.