Eli Lilly acquires global rights to the GLP-1 drug discovered by British Silicon AI for $2.75 billion

According to 1M AI News monitoring, one of the world’s largest weight-loss pharmaceutical companies, Eli Lilly, has reached a licensing and research cooperation agreement with AI pharmaceutical company Insilico Medicine (Hong Kong Stock Code 03696) worth up to approximately $2.75 billion, obtaining global exclusive development, production, and commercialization rights for an AI-discovered GLP-1 oral diabetes medication. Insilico will receive an upfront payment of $115 million, with further payments and sales shares based on regulatory and commercialization milestones.

Eli Lilly’s own GLP-1 drug, Mounjaro, is projected to be the second highest-selling drug globally in 2025, but the company is facing competitive pressure from Novo Nordisk’s first oral weight-loss drug, with its stock price having fallen 17% this year. Eli Lilly CFO Lucas Montarce previously stated that the company is “heavily investing” in AI research and has built a supercomputer powered by NVIDIA at its headquarters, announcing plans in January to construct a new $1 billion research laboratory in San Francisco. Eli Lilly Asia Ventures is one of Insilico’s top ten shareholders, and the two companies began their collaboration in 2023.

Insilico Medicine was founded in 2014 at Johns Hopkins University and is one of the earliest companies to apply generative AI to drug discovery. Founder Alex Zhavoronkov stated that the company has used AI to develop at least 28 drugs, with nearly half already entering clinical stages. The company went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last December and is currently not yet profitable, with licensing deals being its core source of revenue.