Insights / Activity
Field notes on Partnerships and Alliances — the structures, governance, and operating realities of cross-company deals in life sciences.
25 posts in Partnership / Alliance
22 Sept 2026 · 1 min read
Anthropic has set up a biology wet lab in the Bay Area, two days after Novo Nordisk signed up to test Claude Science. The lab tightens the loop between model and experiment, and it points to Anthropic selling Claude as the intelligence layer for pharma R&D.
15 Sept 2026 · 2 min read
Lessons from the DayOne 2026 cohort session in Basel on decision-making, evidence of value and the work needed to make pharma R&D partnerships succeed.
3 Sept 2026 · 1 min read
OpenAI connected ChatGPT to Epic's records for over 325 million patients on a read-only basis, mirroring the structure of the Claudeforce deal between Salesforce and Anthropic. I conclude Epic will not be dislodged as long as it keeps the model layer interchangeable.
25 Jun 2026 · 1 min read
Sanofi and Pangaea Data's AATD collaboration shows where pharma AI may create near-term value: finding undiagnosed patients already visible in clinical records. In rare disease, patient identification can create patient value and market expansion at the same time.
5 May 2026 · 3 min read
Capital depth, role mix, and integration target. Three signals that separate a real pharma AI capability build from a press-release pilot dressed up as a strategic partnership.
31 Mar 2026 · 3 min read
Eli Lilly’s third Insilico deal in three years: $115M upfront, up to $2.75B in milestones, plus royalties. The progression from software licensing in 2023 to a $2.75B commitment in 2026 tells the real story. The signal for the rest of the AI drug discovery space is harder to read — deals like this concentrate pharma attention on proven platforms.
26 Mar 2026 · 3 min read
A company you’ve most likely never heard of just raised $787M for AI-driven biologics. The headline number is striking. Sanofi’s trajectory — partner to repeat customer to investor in under twelve months — tells you more about the platform than any press release. The Delaware-incorporated, Beijing-operating structure is the emerging architecture for Chinese AI biotech going global.
23 Mar 2026 · 3 min read
Verily raised $300M, ended Alphabet’s controlling stake, and changed its legal name to Verily Health Inc. The capital matters. The structural change matters more. In healthcare, ownership structure is part of the product. As a personal anecdote, I stopped using my Fitbit the moment Google took over.
19 Feb 2026 · 2 min read
Two pharma-AI deals in two weeks, two completely different architectures. Takeda paid $1.7B for Iambic. Now Merck skips techbio entirely and runs its AI models inside Mayo Clinic’s secure data environment. The architecture behind the Merck deal is what matters.
22 Jan 2026 · 2 min read
NVIDIA and Eli Lilly are putting $1B into a co-located Bay Area lab where Lilly scientists and NVIDIA engineers build drug discovery models side by side. Not a typical AI partnership. The real story is closed-loop discovery, and the moat is the loop, not the model.
6 Jan 2026 · 2 min read
Insilico Medicine closed 2025 with a ~US$293M HKEX IPO and opened 2026 with an $888M oncology collaboration with Servier — two major pharma deals in two months that suggest repeatable demand for their AI drug discovery platform.
11 Dec 2025 · 1 min read
My former colleagues at Novartis just signed a $1.7B deal with a seed-stage company — not for a drug or a molecule, but for targets. This signals a real shift in where pharma sees risk and is willing to pay in the value chain.
13 Nov 2025 · 1 min read
AbbVie is quietly unwinding its 11-year longevity bet with Google's (Alphabet's) Calico Life Sciences — a $1.5B collaboration started in 2014 around aging and age-related disease. I don't think this particular setback signals something more fundamental, but it raises real questions about where dedicated drug development in longevity is headed.
6 Nov 2025 · 1 min read
After working with both global pharma leaders and early-stage AI firms, I've seen a pattern: partnerships, done right, are the only scalable route to real-world adoption of AI.
4 Nov 2025 · 1 min read
Eli Lilly just moved from renting compute to owning it — 1,000+ Blackwell B300 GPUs in an on-prem DGX SuperPOD in Indianapolis. Their TuneLab initiative could turn R&D IT from a cost center into a deal channel, and it's further proof that pharma is finally taking AI seriously.
12 Jun 2025 · 1 min read
One of the biggest paradoxes in health data is that the most valuable insights are locked within the most sensitive and difficult-to-access information — a natural brake on innovation. I explore how the new Atropos Health and Databricks partnership takes a meaningful step toward solving this.
22 May 2025 · 1 min read
After several recent trips to the GCC, I've seen firsthand how the UAE and Saudi Arabia are putting serious momentum and capital into building AI-first healthcare ecosystems. This week's Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi partnership with G42 and Oracle Health is one to watch.
13 May 2025 · 1 min read
Last week at the AI in Clinical Development Summit 2025 in NYC, I joined a panel tackling the timeless build-or-buy question for pharma AI in clinical development. Our consensus: a "build with" strategy — co-developing with selected strategic AI startup partners — strikes the right balance between speed, fit, and long-term value.
15 Apr 2025 · 1 min read
I attended AbuDhabiGlobalHealthWeek and heard compelling talks on the UAE's AI and healthcare ambitions. The region is investing heavily in data infrastructure, international R&D partnerships, and the funding ecosystem needed to attract global investment.
18 Mar 2025 · 1 min read
AI in healthcare shouldn't aim to replace professionals — its true potential lies in enhancing their ability to deliver quality care. I explore how Wysa's merger with April Health exemplifies the broader industry trend of combining human empathy with AI-enabled tools in mental healthcare.
5 Dec 2024 · 1 min read
Interesting insights on the use of GenAI in Healthcare, from Bayer's Guido Mathews, Medtronic's Irina Evstifeeva and Karista's Amine Benmoussa at Health Tech Forward in Barcelona. From drug discovery and digital twins to medical imaging and workflow efficiency, the panel surfaced where GenAI is maturing — and where it still has a long way to go.
20 Nov 2024 · 1 min read
Oura's $5B valuation following its deal with Dexcom signals a powerful convergence of continuous glucose monitoring and consumer wearables — and I think it could be a game-changer for health optimization well beyond diabetic patients.
18 Nov 2024 · 1 min read
Formation Bio, in collaboration with Sanofi and OpenAI, has introduced Muse, an AI-powered tool designed to optimize patient recruitment in clinical trials. I think it will be fascinating to watch how this three-party collaboration — Big Pharma, Health Tech, and Large Tech — evolves, and I wouldn't be surprised to see more of these partnerships emerge in the coming year.
11 Sept 2024 · 1 min read
While Europe is still trying to implement an electronic patient record, Tencent in China is building an end-to-end digital healthcare system — a vision I saw firsthand when we at Novartis built our strategic partnership with Tencent back in 2018.
26 Aug 2024 · 1 min read
Following Pear's bankruptcy, their FDA-cleared DTx apps reSET and reSET-O have been relaunched by PursueCare — and I think it's a timely reminder that we may have been overly optimistic about digital therapeutics succeeding independently, and that go-to-market strategy deserves an open mind.