Insights / Industry
Field notes on Tech Bio — the companies, capital, and platform bets defining where biology meets software.
35 posts in Tech Bio
18 Jun 2026 · 2 min read
This week, Merck signed a $510M AI collaboration and PE firm Altaris took Simulations Plus private for ~$375M — both bets on the infrastructure layer beneath the molecule. I think the durable value in drug discovery keeps pooling one level down: whoever owns the data generation and simulation tooling owns the part that compounds.
9 Jun 2026 · 2 min read
Anthropic benchmarked Claude Opus 4.7 against ChemDraw and MestReNova on NMR prediction and structure elucidation, and the general model matched the specialist tools. The read for techbio: encoded domain knowledge is becoming a default capability of general models.
21 May 2026 · 1 min read
Nature published three AI scientist systems on the same day this week — FutureHouse's Robin, Google's Co-Scientist, and ERA — and the detail that matters for pharma is what they run on. Peer review commoditised the reasoning; the real edge still sits in proprietary data and lab throughput that these systems cannot reach.
19 May 2026 · 3 min read
AstraZeneca's licensing of Owkin's K Pro platform signals where agentic AI is actually landing in pharma right now — competitive intelligence — not the broader scientific autonomy the positioning implies. I break down which workflows are realistic today and why the teams that start with unglamorous, high-leverage tasks will be best positioned when the harder problems become tractable.
14 May 2026 · 4 min read
I spoke at the Global Health Exhibition Capital Xchange webinar opened by the Saudi Ministry of Health, and the headline story in healthcare venture this year is concentration — less capital, larger checks, AI dominating in techbio and clinical workflows, and a Saudi market that is shifting from consumer to producer economy.
12 May 2026 · 4 min read
Isomorphic Labs is in advanced talks to raise more than $2B, and I'm of two minds about it. The capital is welcome, but the deeper question is whether tech boards will stay patient through a decade of clinical iteration — and whether anyone is funding the downstream bottleneck that more AI-generated candidates will only tighten.
7 May 2026 · 3 min read
Most AI-first techbios are modeling clinical costs that are roughly half of what they will actually face — and the capital required to put an AI-derived molecule in front of a patient has roughly doubled within the lifespan of one mRNA company. Discovery cost reductions are real and welcome, but the binding constraint sits elsewhere.
16 Apr 2026 · 3 min read
Last week, OpenAI made two moves in pharma within 48 hours — a flagship enterprise deal with Novo Nordisk and the launch of GPT-Rosalind — and the sequencing tells a deliberate story about how they're building a verticalised commercial infrastructure for life sciences. Having sat on the pharma buyer side, I break down what that cadence actually accomplishes.
14 Apr 2026 · 3 min read
The hyperscalers are moving on drug discovery from every direction — Anthropic acquired Coefficient Bio, and AWS just launched Amazon Bio Discovery with 40+ biological foundation models and integrated CRO partners. I still don't think the commercial model of pharma is under major threat, but the R&D part is clearly heating up massively.
9 Apr 2026 · 3 min read
Rock Health quietly retired the AI deal category in their Q1 2026 digital health report. The reason: the distinction between AI-enabled and non-AI digital health no longer holds. AI is table stakes. The companies pulling in nine-figure checks share something else — workflow integration depth.
7 Apr 2026 · 4 min read
Most coverage frames the Coefficient Bio acquisition as a valuation story: $44M per head, a 38,000% return, eight months old, no product, no revenue. All true. All missing the point. Anthropic bought the scientific decision layer.
7 Apr 2026 · 3 min read
Boehringer Ingelheim's new AI and machine learning center in London signals something more specific than another pharma AI announcement — pharma is starting to build permanent capability hubs, not just buy software deals. My bet is that by 2028, the companies with serious in-house computational capability will look structurally different from the ones that outsourced both talent and hardware.
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.
24 Feb 2026 · 3 min read
Europe keeps asking “will AI in pharma R&D mean fewer jobs?” That’s the wrong question. The right one is who captures the value. Adoption is real but structurally slow. TechBio reshapes the pipeline economy. Data hunger grows. The real risk: while Europe debates headcount, the platforms and IP get built elsewhere.
10 Feb 2026 · 3 min read
The Gulf has three things most emerging life sciences ecosystems lack: sovereign capital, speed of decision making, and political will. What it still needs is the operational layer that turns investment into outcomes — and an investor base that understands the life sciences risk profile.
29 Jan 2026 · 3 min read
Hologen, Eric Schmidt’s stealth biotech-AI venture, is raising $150M at an $850M pre-money on a promise of 100% returns in 12 months. The pitch is closer to financial underwriting than AI product development. Here’s what would convince me it’s more than narrative.
5 Jan 2026 · 2 min read
I'm sharing my 5 bets for AI in Healthcare and TechBio in 2026 — from ambient scribes becoming table stakes to a TechBio Series B shakeout accelerating. If one of these is wrong, I want to know which one and what would change your mind.
16 Dec 2025 · 3 min read
OpenAI is among the backers of Chai Discovery, a biotech founded in 2024 already valued at $1.3B — and I think the real question isn't whether their antibody design model works, but whether model-layer innovation becomes infrastructure or a durable moat.
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.
9 Dec 2025 · 3 min read
Most AI drug discovery decks assume chemistry will keep up — but small molecule chemistry is still slow, manual, and spread across vendors, which is where a lot of AI 'efficiency' quietly disappears. I look at why fixing chemistry first may be the real unlock, and at the teams finally treating it as the main problem to solve.
1 Dec 2025 · 2 min read
MIT just open-sourced BoltzGen, a generative AI for protein binder design — but I don't think it disrupts AI drug discovery companies any more than Linux killed software. The moat was never the model; it's proprietary data, wet-lab validation, and pharma relationships.
20 Nov 2025 · 1 min read
Jeff Bezos just bet $106M on Profluent, a company using frontier AI models to design proteins that don't exist in nature — and I break down exactly what makes these models 'frontier' and why it matters for programmable biology.
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.
8 Oct 2025 · 3 min read
I joined an inspiring panel this morning at BioTechX with investors from Flagship Pioneering, Hikma Pharmaceuticals, MTIP, Lauxera Capital Partners, and Archimed to discuss where we stand on the journey of cracking biology and health with AI. From agentic AI and defensible moats to the tech-bio platform vs. pipeline dilemma and whether we're in an AI bubble, the conversation covered the full frontier.
6 Oct 2025 · 1 min read
I attended an inspiring talk from Sergei Yakneen, CTO at Isomorphic Labs, at BiotechX2025 in Basel — and it's clear that Google's Alphabet subsidiary is really onto something with their AlphaFold3-powered approach to AI drug discovery at scale.
22 Sept 2025 · 1 min read
Flagship Pioneering's Lila Sciences just raised $235M in Series A to build AI-and-robotics-powered "science factories" — and I think the full-stack automation thesis is more compelling than AI-alone approaches for drug discovery.
24 Apr 2025 · 1 min read
Biolinq has raised $100M to challenge the CGM market with an intradermal patch that uses microneedles and a built-in LED display — and I break down what makes their approach genuinely different from devices like Abbott's FreeStyle Libre.
3 Apr 2025 · 1 min read
Google DeepMind's spin-off Isomorphic Labs has just raised $600M from Thrive Capital and GV, the latest mega-round in the blazing AI-enabled drug discovery space. I'm watching closely to see whether bigger funding truly translates to tangible clinical results in this rapidly emerging field.
13 Feb 2025 · 1 min read
I explore whether AI is truly rewriting the rules of drug discovery or just riding a wave of hype — from Latent Labs' €48M funding round to the real-world limits of fully in silico drug development. I genuinely believe we'll see the first 100% AI-discovered drug hit the market within the next 5–7 years.
28 Jan 2025 · 1 min read
It currently feels like a new techbio AI drug discovery play is launched on a weekly basis, showing the AI hype in this field isn't over yet. I'm curious to see how this new generation of companies will fare compared to previous biotech platform plays, given that many steps like MedChem and Toxicology still take time even with AI acceleration.
14 Jan 2025 · 1 min read
One of the first tech-bio deals out of JPM this year sees Insilico Medicine and MENARINI Group deepen their partnership around an AI-discovered asset — not an AI platform — potentially worth up to $550M. I'm curious which business model will emerge as the leader for AI-techbio companies: selling AI platforms and services, or developing your own pipeline.
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.
28 Nov 2024 · 1 min read
Cradle, a Netherlands-based generative AI biotech startup, just raised a $73M Series B — a round that's truly big by EU standards and signals the explosive growth of AI-driven drug discovery. I see real parallels to the rise of Veeva, and the coming years promise to be game-changing.
10 Sept 2024 · 1 min read
Another significant $120M funding round has landed in AI-driven drug discovery, this time with Lilly leading alongside Nvidia and key VC funds. I'm optimistic that we could be witnessing the birth of the next Amgen, Genentech, or Biogen — powered by AI.
2 Jul 2024 · 1 min read
PharmaTech is increasingly becoming a category on its own, with PitchBook launching a dedicated research report and Q1 2024 seeing $749 million in funding across 39 deals. I think it's worth examining how they define the category, given the interesting mix of CDMO/CMO activities and AI enablement they cluster together.