Insilico and SK Biopharmaceuticals sign AI drug discovery deal worth up to $2.5B
At the BIO 2026 convention on June 22, 2026, Insilico Medicine and South Korea's SK Biopharmaceuticals announced a collaboration to find drug candidates for neuroinflammatory, neurodegenerative and rare neurological disorders using Insilico's Pharma.AI platform. Insilico gets up to $18 million in upfront and near-term payments. The total potential value tops $2.5 billion, almost all of it tied to future development, regulatory and sales milestones, plus single-digit royalties. SK Biopharmaceuticals, maker of the epilepsy drug Xcopri, will run late-stage development and commercialization.
Why it's notable: It adds to a run of large pharma deals for AI drug discovery, but the small upfront payment shows buyers are still paying mostly for results rather than promises.