Archive

Here you’ll find all the issued of the Life Sciences Digital NEWSLETTER.

May 18, 2026

Isomorphic Labs Raises $2.1 Billion. FDA Holds the Line on AI Device Oversight. AI Drug Discovery Approaches Its First Clinical Test.

Last week we tracked Roche absorbing the pathology AI layer through its PathAI acquisition, Tempus extending its diagnostic reach into Alzheimer's detection, and Sanofi committing $294 million to AI infrastructure in Toronto. The story was about exits and ownership: pharma deciding to own the AI capabilities it had spent years evaluating. This week, the capital kept moving. Isomorphic Labs closed a $2.1 billion Series B, the largest funding round yet for an AI-native drug discovery platform, with its first IND now targeted for late 2026. The FDA rejected a proposal to ease premarket review requirements for AI diagnostic tools, making clear that regulatory accountability scales with clinical risk regardless of developer track record. And upstream of the headline deals, the physical infrastructure is catching up: Merck KGaA's bioprocessing division grew 16% organically in Q1, tracking the surge in biologics and cell therapy manufacturing that the AI investment wave is driving.

May 11, 2026

Roche Buys the Pathology AI Layer. Tempus Pivots Beyond Oncology. Pharma's AI Infrastructure Bets Keep Compounding.

Last week we tracked Lilly committing $2.25 billion to AI-designed DNA editors and clinical AI raising another $227 million in a single week. The capital story was about scale. This week, the story is about exits. Roche acquired PathAI for up to $1.05 billion, formalising a five-year partnership and signalling that AI pathology is now a strategic asset to own, not a vendor to evaluate. Tempus AI raised $400 million and extended its diagnostic reach beyond oncology with a new Alzheimer's blood biomarker collaboration. And Sanofi committed $294 million to scale its Toronto AI Center of Excellence.

May 4, 2026

Eli Lilly Bets $2.25 Billion on AI-Designed DNA Editors. Clinical AI Raises $227 Million in One Week.

Last week we tracked the compliance and infrastructure layer being built beneath the model stack, with Iridius, Boehringer Ingelheim's London AI centre, and J&J moving AI into neurovascular imaging. This week, the deals got larger and more structurally significant. Eli Lilly committed up to $2.25 billion to a 2022-founded AI startup designing recombinase enzymes capable of DNA insertions that CRISPR-based methods cannot achieve at scale. Aidoc and Iterative Health together raised $227 million for clinical AI infrastructure in a single week. Mayo Clinic published results showing an AI model flags pancreatic cancer on routine CT scans an average of 16 months before clinical diagnosis. And new data confirmed what many in clinical operations suspected: more than half of all registered clinical trials are now run entirely outside the United States.

Apr 27, 2026

Iridius Builds the Compliance Layer. Boehringer Opens a £150M AI Centre.

Last week we covered the model layer arriving — GPT-Rosalind from OpenAI, Amazon Bio Discovery. This week, the stack below the models is getting built. Iridius closed an $8.6 million seed round to embed compliance directly into AI workflows across regulated industries, with Accenture putting capital behind the thesis. Boehringer Ingelheim committed £150 million over a decade to a new AI and machine learning centre in London. Johnson & Johnson moved AI into neurovascular imaging through a partnership with Viz.ai. Meanwhile, Europe is catching up on two fronts at once: WHO data confirms AI diagnostics are already deployed across three quarters of EU member states, and a coalition of 40 industry organizations is pushing to build the legislative infrastructure that will let the continent scale what it has started.

Apr 20, 2026

OpenAI Releases Its Drug Discovery Model. Amazon Opens the Biology Platform.

Last week we tracked capital concentrating fast — Rock Health's Q1 data confirmed $4 billion raised in digital health in a single quarter, sixty percent of it landing in just twelve transactions. The platforms capturing investment are the ones that have already crossed from evaluation to infrastructure. This week, two of the largest technology companies in the world decided they would build that infrastructure themselves.OpenAI launched GPT-Rosalind, its first domain-specific reasoning model, built for drug discovery and named after Rosalind Franklin. The same week, Amazon Web Services launched Amazon Bio Discovery — a platform of more than 40 biological foundation models connected directly to wet lab partners for physical validation of computationally designed candidates. Novo Nordisk anchored OpenAI's pharma ambitions with a company-wide integration spanning drug discovery, manufacturing, supply chain, and commercial operations.Seven weeks ago we covered Anthropic acquiring a small biology team. This week, the products arrived.

Apr 13, 2026

Digital Health Capital Is Concentrating Fast. Tempus Embeds in Gilead. AI Enters the Chemotherapy Decision.

Last week we tracked Anthropic's $400 million bet on biology and watched AI displace the pharmaceutical rep as the default front door to clinical evidence. This week the market answered with data. Rock Health's Q1 2026 report documented $4 billion raised in digital health in a single quarter — the highest average deal size since 2021, with sixty percent of all capital landing in just twelve transactions. AI companies now account for the majority of large rounds, and the gap between the platforms capturing investment and the rest of the field is widening each quarter. The concentration is not a cyclical pattern. It is a structural one. Tempus AI secured enterprise-wide adoption at Gilead Sciences, converting an existing data agreement into a platform embed across Gilead's full oncology portfolio. Caris Life Sciences moved AI into the chemotherapy decision for the most common form of lung cancer. And PathAI deployed its FDA-cleared digital pathology platform across MedStar Health's laboratory network. Across discovery, diagnostics, and clinical operations, the same dynamic is playing out: AI is moving from evaluation to infrastructure.

Apr 7, 2026

Anthropic Bets $400M on Biology. AI Becomes the Front Door to Pharma. Governed AI Is the Next Product Category.

Last week we covered the largest capital commitment to an external AI drug discovery platform in pharma history — Lilly paying $115 million upfront and $2.75 billion in potential value to Insilico Medicine. Caris brought molecular AI into first-line pancreatic cancer therapy selection. Tempus moved from data vendor to embedded development partner inside a Daiichi Sankyo drug program. And Merck confirmed 34,000 monthly users on its internal AI. This week, the story moved upstream. Anthropic paid $400 million for an eight-month-old team of fewer than ten people — all former Genentech researchers, all building biology-native AI. Frontier AI labs are no longer selling tools to life sciences. They are becoming part of it.

Mar 30, 2026

Insilico and Lilly Reset the Price of AI Drug Discovery. Oncology AI Enters the Clinical Standard.

Last week, the compute got installed. This week, the deals got signed. Insilico Medicine closed a $2.75 billion collaboration with Eli Lilly — $115 million upfront, exclusive worldwide license, multiple therapeutic areas — the largest capital commitment to an external AI drug discovery platform from a top-5 pharma to date. Caris Life Sciences launched an AI tool that guides first-line therapy selection for pancreatic cancer at the molecular level. The tool runs on tissue already collected for standard molecular profiling — no additional biopsy required. Tempus AI moved from data vendor to embedded development partner inside a Daiichi Sankyo drug program. And Merck confirmed 34,000 monthly users on its internal AI, with autonomous agents cutting commercial insight generation time in half. The question was never whether AI would reshape drug discovery. The question was who would pay for it, at what scale, and when. This week, Lilly answered all three.

Mar 23, 2026

Roche Locks In the Compute. IQVIA Deploys the Agents. Google Moves Into European Pharmacy.

Last week we tracked Veeva absorbing the compliance layer and IQVIA declaring 150 agents in production. This week, the infrastructure war got physical. Roche activated over 3,500 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs across the U.S. and Europe — the largest declared AI compute footprint in pharma — and called it what it is: a factory. IQVIA launched IQVIA.ai at GTC 2026, an agentic platform already embedded in 19 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies. Earendil Labs raised $787 million on an AI biologics platform that has already produced over 40 programs. And Google partnered with DocMorris to build an AI-first digital pharmacy for 11 million patients in Europe. The compute is being installed. The agents are running. The capital is following platforms that can prove output, not just potential.

Mar 16, 2026

Veeva Buys the Compliance Layer. Agentic AI Goes to Work. Life Sciences Software Is Choosing Its Infrastructure.

Last week we tracked Google Cloud threading itself through the infrastructure layer of American healthcare. This week, the decisions got more concrete. Veeva acquired the leading compliant conversational AI platform for patients and HCPs, signalling that AI-powered brand engagement is now a commercial requirement, not an experiment. IQVIA confirmed it has 150 AI agents running in production across its operations, with 500 targeted by 2027. Medidata launched a commercial AI companion that compresses clinical trial build timelines from weeks to hours. And NVIDIA committed $2 billion to the compute infrastructure that will run life sciences AI for the next decade. The platforms are being chosen. The infrastructure is being locked in. The window for "we are evaluating AI" is closing.

Mar 9, 2026

Google Builds the Healthcare OS. Pharma Hands AI the Keys to Clinical Trials.

Last week we covered the moment AI stopped being a promise and started paying bills. This week, the bills got bigger. Google Cloud showed up at HIMSS 2026 with not one but five major healthcare partnerships announced in the span of days. AstraZeneca's digital health spinout Evinova signed AI deals with three top-20 pharma companies simultaneously. And RadNet dropped €230 million on radiology AI company Gleamer, extending a consolidation wave that is quietly reshaping how imaging gets delivered worldwide. The pattern is clear. AI in life sciences is no longer about individual companies experimenting. It is about platforms being chosen, infrastructure being locked in, and portfolios being assembled through M&A.

Mar 2, 2026

AI Stops Being a Promise and Starts Paying the Bills

Something shifted this week in how the industry is talking about AI. The word "pilot" is nearly gone from the conversation. What replaced it: IPOs, billion-dollar deals, and a landmark survey that puts hard numbers on what AI is actually returning. The era of proof-of-concept is over. This week, AI in life sciences officially entered the era of proof-of-results.

Feb 23, 2026

The Agentic R&D Shift: How Life Sciences Is Rebuilding the Lab Around AI

In 2026, we are officially entering the "Agentic Era." As we look at the headlines from the past week, the theme is clear: AI has moved from an assistant to an active researcher that executes workflows. From Eli Lilly’s new "AI Factory" to Merck’s massive data play with Mayo Clinic, the industry is no longer just "using AI"—it is rebuilding the laboratory around it. In every issue, we pull together the most relevant developments at the intersection of life sciences and AI — from product launches and funding moves to events coming up.