Which drug companies sign the most AI drug discovery deals

Deals announced January 1, 2025 to October 16, 2026. Counts are public announcements of new or expanded deals with AI drug discovery companies, including option exercises. Milestone updates inside older deals are not counted.

From my AI drug discovery dataset, I counted the public announcements of new or expanded deals between 15 large drug companies and artificial intelligence (AI) drug discovery companies. The 15 are the large global drug makers I follow most closely, my own choice rather than a ranking. Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca and Novartis lead with six each. Takeda, Sanofi and GSK have four each, Pfizer and Roche have three each, and the other seven in the table have one or two. Other drug makers also signed deals in this window, including Servier with three, Boehringer Ingelheim and argenx with two each and Revolution Medicines with one. Servier’s are with Insilico, Owkin and Iktos, argenx’s are with Chai and Unnatural Products, and Boehringer Ingelheim’s are with Owkin and Envisagenics. The rest appear in the AI company cards below rather than in the table.

Every pairing is on one page in my AI drug discovery partner map.

Company	Deals	AI partners
Eli Lilly	6	Insilico (2), Chai (2), Nimbus, Profluent
AstraZeneca	6	CSPC (3), Turbine, Owkin, insitro
Novartis	6	Isomorphic, Monte Rosa, Relation, Unnatural Products, Chai, Orionis
Takeda	4	Nabla Bio, Iambic, Boltz, Insilico
Sanofi	4	Earendil (2), Owkin, Aqemia
GSK	4	Noetik, Boltz, Relation, Chai
Pfizer	3	PostEra, Boltz, Chai
Roche (incl. Genentech)	3	Dyno, Earendil, Recursion
Merck & Co.	2	Variational AI, Protillion
Novo Nordisk	2	Valo, Orbis
Bayer	2	Cradle, Iambic
Merck KGaA	2	Valo, PostEra
Bristol Myers Squibb	1	Chai
Johnson & Johnson	1	Isomorphic
AbbVie	1	Iambic

What the leaders signed

Lilly’s six are mostly program deals, where the drug maker licenses or co-develops specific molecules and the announcement carries a large milestone number. It signed a research and license deal with Insilico Medicine in November 2025, with potential payments of over $100 million, then went back to Insilico in March 2026 with $115 million upfront and milestones that could bring the total to about $2.75 billion. In between came Nimbus Therapeutics with a potential total of up to about $1.3 billion and Chai Discovery. Under the April 2026 Profluent deal, Profluent is eligible for up to $2.25 billion in development and commercial milestones, on top of an upfront payment and committed research funding whose amounts were not disclosed. In June 2026 Lilly signed a second Chai deal, which gives select biotechs in Lilly TuneLab free trial access to Chai’s tools for designing miniproteins, small engineered proteins used as drug candidates.

AstraZeneca’s six mix program deals with model deals, which license or deploy AI models. Three are with the Chinese drugmaker CSPC Pharmaceutical, shown in the cards below, and I count each one because each announcement names a CSPC AI platform. The October 15, 2026 deal with insitro is $40 million upfront and up to about $1.46 billion in milestones. Its Turbine deal uses virtual disease models for antibody-drug conjugates (antibodies that carry a toxic drug to a cell), and its Owkin deal licenses K Pro to build AI agents.

Novartis also has six. The largest headline among them comes from Monte Rosa Therapeutics, which Novartis signed in September 2025 to discover degraders, drugs that make the cell break down a target protein, for immune-mediated diseases using Monte Rosa’s AI and machine learning enabled QuEEN engine. Monte Rosa’s filing gives $120 million upfront and up to $5.4 billion in clinical development, regulatory and sales milestones, on top of option and preclinical payments.

In February 2025 Novartis expanded its Isomorphic Labs collaboration, adding up to three research programs a year after the 2024 start. It added Relation Therapeutics for target discovery in atopic (allergy-related) diseases and signed Chai Discovery after more than a year of technical work together. Under the Unnatural Products deal, the company receives up to $100 million upfront and in milestones before an investigational new drug (IND) filing, the application to start human trials, and up to $1.7 billion in development, regulatory and commercial milestones. In June 2026 it expanded its 2020 collaboration with Orionis Biosciences on molecular glues, small molecules that bring a target protein together with another protein. The deal uses Orionis’s Allo-Glue platform with its AI-driven discovery engine and carries $40 million upfront and up to $1.4 billion in milestones.

Sanofi licensed two bispecific antibodies (antibodies that bind two targets) from Earendil Labs in April 2025 for $125 million upfront plus up to $1.72 billion in milestones, then signed a second Earendil deal in January 2026 with a potential total value of up to $2.56 billion. It also took a five-year license to Owkin’s K Pro AI tool as part of a co-development deal, and expanded its December 2023 collaboration with Aqemia by adding a new target. The up to $140 million in upfront and milestone payments that Aqemia can receive covers the whole collaboration since 2023, not only the new work.

Under Takeda’s second collaboration with Nabla Bio, Nabla receives upfront and research cost payments in the “double-digit millions” and is eligible for success-based payments that may exceed $1 billion in total. The Iambic deal could exceed $1.7 billion, and the July 2026 deal with Insilico Medicine carries milestones that could bring the total to approximately $600 million. The June 2026 deal with Boltz deploys Boltz models across Takeda. For the 2026 deals with headline values of $1 billion or more, see my companion post on the $1B+ AI drug deals of 2026.

GSK’s four deals are mostly model or platform deals. Two of the four announcements give a figure, Noetik and Relation in the cards below. In my view, GSK is putting priority on models its scientists can use directly, and the Chai deal followed a test in which GSK made Chai’s designs in its own wet labs.

The AI companies drug makers keep choosing

These five AI companies recur on the AI side of my data, and several of them also sign drug makers outside the table above. Boltz also has three deals in the table, with Takeda, GSK and Pfizer.

Companies with one to three deals

Compute and data ties

I list deals with technology companies and hospitals separately from the counts above. The four cards show examples from the 15 that touch drug discovery or the computing behind it, not a full list. Their AI work runs through outside discovery partners and through their own computing and data at the same time.

Who did not show up in my searches

Beyond the 15 in the table and the deals named in the cards, my searches for this dataset found no AI drug discovery item at all for six companies on my Pharma AI Tracker list. The rest of the list was outside this count. They are Galderma, Sandoz, Sobi, Torrent, United Therapeutics and Viatris. Finding nothing in my searches is not proof of no activity.

How I counted

A deal here is a new or expanded collaboration, license, option exercise or program acquisition between a drug company and an AI drug discovery company, announced January 1, 2025 to October 16, 2026. Option exercises inside an existing deal count, while milestone payments inside one are left out, so Terray’s December 2025 discovery milestone with Bristol Myers Squibb does not appear in the counts. For the drug programs themselves, see my AI Drug Pipeline Tracker.

Every source is a release, stock-exchange filing or article from a company in the deal, or that company’s official post on X, and I checked each one on October 17, 2026. Most dollar figures come from the AI company’s announcement, and I include selected disclosed figures rather than every one. Some releases are linked through BioSpace’s copy of the Business Wire release.