Eli Lilly Signs Up to $2.75B Deal for Insilico’s AI Drugs

Eli Lilly and Insilico Medicine announced a global licensing and research collaboration on March 29, 2026, worth up to $2.75 billion, deepening a partnership that began in 2023.

Eli Lilly and Insilico Medicine announced a global drug discovery and licensing collaboration on Sunday worth up to $2.75 billion, the companies said, in one of the largest deals yet between a major pharmaceutical firm and an artificial intelligence-driven drug developer.

The agreement grants Lilly an exclusive worldwide license for the development, manufacturing and commercialization of potentially best-in-class, novel oral therapeutics in preclinical development for certain indications.

Under the financial terms, Insilico is eligible to receive $115 million in upfront payments, followed by development, regulatory and commercial milestones that could bring the total deal value to approximately $2.75 billion, plus tiered royalties on future sales.

The two companies first joined forces in 2023 with an AI software licensing agreement. The latest deal follows a $100 million partnership struck in November 2025, and is set to expand Lilly’s access to Insilico’s AI engine in the pursuit of novel therapeutics.

In addition to the licensing deal, Insilico and Lilly will collaborate on multiple R&D programs focused on targets selected by Lilly, combining Insilico’s Pharma.AI platforms with Lilly’s development capabilities and disease-area expertise.

Andrew Adams, group vice president of Molecule Discovery at Lilly, said Insilico’s AI-enabled discovery is “a powerful complement” to Lilly’s clinical development, and that the collaboration would allow the company to explore novel mechanisms and accelerate identification of promising therapeutic candidates across multiple disease areas.

While neither company disclosed the specific drug candidates covered under the deal, a report in the Financial Times, citing undisclosed sources, said the agreement includes a GLP-1 receptor agonist candidate for diabetes. Insilico’s pipeline webpage was recently updated to note that a candidate targeting GLP-1 had been out-licensed to an undisclosed partner.

Insilico has developed at least 28 drugs using generative AI tools, with nearly half already at a clinical stage, according to Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilico.

Insilico’s proprietary Pharma.AI platform sits at the core of the collaboration. The platform’s biology engine, PandaOmics, analyzes vast datasets to identify promising targets, while its generative chemistry engine, Chemistry42, designs and optimizes new small-molecule compounds against those targets.

The approach has already produced what the company calls a landmark result. Insilico’s lead clinical candidate for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is the first investigational drug in which both the biological target and the therapeutic compound were discovered using generative AI. Results from a Phase IIa trial published in Nature Medicine in June 2025 showed that AI-designed rentosertib improved lung function by 98.4 mL in IPF patients marking what may be the first peer-reviewed Phase IIa result for a molecule generated entirely by generative AI.

Rentosertib is not part of the Lilly deal. A Phase 3 program for the drug is expected to start in China before the end of the year.

In its 2025 financial report, published alongside the Lilly announcement, Insilico said it had signed $1.3 billion in business development deals with leading multinational pharma companies and top Chinese biopharma firms in 2025 and early 2026. The company made $56 million in revenue last year, spent around $81 million on R&D, and ended 2025 with cash reserves of $393 million.

The Lilly deal is the company’s second focusing on AI with a Chinese-linked company in recent months, following a $345 million partnership with Shanghai-based Xtalpi last November.

Disclaimer: This reporting is based on publicly available reporting. Nervnow has not independently verified the claims.

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