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Novo Nordisk has entered a strategic partnership with OpenAI to integrate AI systems across its research, manufacturing, and commercial workflows. Initial pilot programs are expected across R&D, manufacturing, and commercial units, with broader rollout planned through 2026.

In a recent large-scale code modernization initiative, a team used generative AI to convert a clinical data standards library from one programming language to another. Nearly 80% of the templates transitioned automatically, compressing what would have been months of manual effort into a fraction of the time. Yet the remaining third, platform-specific functions, nuanced derivations, and intricate data transformations, still required deep human expertise to refine and validate. The real story is the shift in ownership.

Boston-based Nia Therapeutics has received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for its Smart Neurostimulation System (SNS), an implantable brain-computer interface (BCI) aimed at treating episodic memory loss in adults with prior moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury. The designation applies to a patient population with limited treatment options, where no FDA-cleared therapies currently address memory impairment directly.

After reporting the first patient dosed in September 2025, early clinical data from a small open-label study indicate that Enveda’s oral candidate, discovered via the company’s PRISM AI platform, ENV-294, produced rapid reductions in disease severity and itch in patients with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis, alongside a safety profile without serious adverse events.

Earendil Labs has secured $787 million in financing to expand its AI-based biologics discovery and development platform, with backing from investors including Dimension Capital, DST Global, Sanofi, and a biotech fund formed by Hillhouse and Pfizer. The funding is intended to support pipeline expansion, team growth, and advancement of multiple antibody programs toward clinical stages.

After emerging from stealth with a $50 million seed round last year, Latent Labs presents Latent-Y, an AI system that can generate antibody candidates directly from written research goals, reportedly moving from concept to lab-tested molecules within hours, with a subsequent technical report (pdf). The system is designed to increase the number of design programs a single researcher can run, with initial validation showing binding activity across multiple biological targets.

Merck has entered a discovery collaboration with Quotient Therapeutics, committing $20 million upfront to access Somatic Genomics, an AI-enabled platform that analyzes somatic mutations directly in patient tissues. The agreement focuses on identifying new drug targets for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), with potential milestone payments bringing the total deal value to $2.2 billion.

I spent last week in Amsterdam, attending HLTH Europe 2026, arguably Europe's flagship healthcare innovation event, hosting more than 5,000 attendees. It is my second HLTH experience, and two additions to this year's program stood out: last year's Pharma & Life Sciences Spotlight grew into a full two-day Global Pharma Summit aimed at C-suite from 30-plus pharma and biotech organizations across 20-plus countries, and the floor gained a dedicated AI @ HLTH zone with its own stage dedicated completely to the progress of artificial intelligence in healthcare and clinical research.

Tempus and Daiichi Sankyo have entered a collaboration to apply multimodal AI models and real-world clinical data to an oncology antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) program. The effort centers on improving patient selection and identifying biomarkers that can differentiate treatment response, aiming to increase clinical trial success rates and refine trial design.

Jeito Capital has closed its second fund, Jeito II, at more than €1 billion, or about $1.2 billion, giving the Paris-based investor a larger pool of capital for clinical-stage biopharma companies in Europe. The firm says the close exceeds its original target and will support 15 to 20 companies, with per-company investments rising to as much as €150 million.

Paris-based techbio Generare has raised €20 million in a Series A round co-led by Alven and daphni, with participation from existing investors. The company is focused on generating previously inaccessible small-molecule data by decoding microbial genomes, aiming to expand the pool of compounds available for drug discovery.

The ongoing collaboration between insitro and Bristol Myers Squibb has been extended to include additional AI-discovered therapeutic targets for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), with early experimental validation in human neuron models. The nomination of the two new targets triggered a $10 million milestone payment to insitro.

Insilico Medicine and Eli Lilly have entered a multi-program AI-driven drug discovery collaboration, combining Insilico’s generative modeling platforms with Lilly’s clinical and commercialization infrastructure. Under the agreement, Insilico receives $115 million upfront, with potential milestone payments bringing the total deal value to approximately $2.75 billion, in addition to tiered royalties on future product sales.

Meta has released TRIBE v2, an open-source foundation model designed to predict human brain responses to visual and auditory stimuli and construct a digital twin of neural activity. The model is trained on more than 500 hours of fMRI recordings from over 700 individuals and builds on an architecture previously benchmarked in the Algonauts 2025 challenge. It supports zero-shot predictions across new subjects, languages, and task settings.

Boston-based Life Biosciences, co-founded by David Sinclair, has closed an $80 million Series D financing to fund its first-in-human clinical program and extend operations into 2027. The capital is allocated primarily to a Phase 1 trial of ER-100 in optic neuropathies and to further development of its Partial Epigenetic Reprogramming platform, which aims to modify cellular aging processes at the transcriptional level.

Bioptimus launched the Spatial Tissue Embedding Learning Atlas (STELA), a large-scale, clinically linked multimodal dataset spanning oncology and immunology. The global initiative, spanning data from patients from three continents, was developed with 10x Genomics and Broad Clinical Laboratories.

Ginkgo Bioworks' (NYSE: DNA) Datapoints arm, Tangible Scientific, and Inductive Bio today launched ADME-One, a single-SKU service that combines a Tier 1 ADME panel, AI-driven human pharmacokinetic projection, and compound management. It is the first product to come out of the three-way partnership the companies announced in August 2025, which committed them to a lab-in-the-loop workflow in which experimental ADME data flows back into Inductive's models for retraining.

A San Francisco startup Epia Neuro launched today with a minimally invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) designed to help stroke survivors regain motor function by reading what the brain intends to do and translating that into actual movement.

Anthropic is reported to have acquired Coefficient Bio, a recently founded AI-driven biotech startup with a team of less than ten people, in a transaction valued at approximately $400 million in stock. The deal centers on integrating a small, technically focused team working on AI-enabled biological research into Anthropic’s expanding life sciences effort, which spans preclinical discovery through regulatory workflows.

Clockwork Bio has been launched as a new AI-native biotech focused on redesigning early-stage oncology drug discovery. The company is developing a platform centered on modeling and controlling cell state transitions, aiming to address limitations in current pipelines that struggle with complex, heterogeneous diseases such as cancer.