A drone view shows the Eli Lilly logo on the company’s office in San Diego, California on November 21, 2025.
Mike Blake | Reuters
BEIJING — American pharmaceutical giant Elie Lilly has reached a $2.75 billion deal to bring drugs developed using artificial intelligence by Hong Kong-based Insilico Medicine to the global market.
The deal will give Insilico $115 million up front, with the remainder subject to regulatory and commercial milestones, as well as royalties on future sales, according to the companies’ announcement Monday.
Insilico has developed at least 28 drugs using generative AI tools, almost half of which are already in the clinical stage, Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilico, told CNBC. The company went public in Hong Kong in December. Its shares are up more than 50% year to date.
“In many ways, Lilly is better than us in some areas of AI,” Zhavoronkov said, noting that the American pharmaceutical giant had “one person” who brought biology, chemistry and automation under one roof. He added that as part of the deal, Insilico would join Lilly Gateway Labs community for the development of biotechnologies.
The two companies have been working together since signing a AI-based software licensing deal in 2023.
“This collaboration allows us to explore new mechanisms and accelerate the identification of promising therapies. cets across multiple disease areas,” Andrew Adams, vice president of the Molecule Discovery Group at Lilly, said in a statement. He called Insilico’s AI-driven discovery a “powerful complement” to Lilly’s clinical development.
Eli Lilly CEO David A. Ricks attended a high-level forum in Beijing earlier this month, just weeks after the company announced plans to invest 3 billion dollars in China over the next decade. The company reported that just under 3% of its turnover came from China last year.
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Insilico is developing its AI outside of China, in Canada and the Middle East, but is conducting preclinical drug development in China based on this AI research, Zhavoronkov said. In addition to reducing research time, he said AI can synthesize molecules faster than those discovered using more traditional methods.
