A fresh wave of industry collaboration is emerging around AI-driven drug development, sparking a broad re-rating of upstream service providers. On September 16, Novo Nordisk announced a partnership with Anthropic to leverage its scientific platform, Claude Science, for accelerated drug discovery. In parallel, GenScript Biotech unveiled a collaboration with Lilly's AI/machine learning discovery platform, Lilly TuneLab, to offer wet lab validation services to participating companies. Adding to the momentum, AI drug development firm Anew Labs, backed by ByteDance, reportedly closed a $290 million Series A round with participation from Sequoia Capital China, Hillhouse, and IDG. The rapid-fire announcements quickly heated up market sentiment.
Driven by these developments, the A-share innovative drug supply chain traded actively, with biotech reagents and raw material concepts leading gains. 近岸蛋白 hit its 20% limit up, 百普赛斯 rose 10.37%, and 义翘神州 advanced 8.45%. Pharmaceutical excipient maker 键凯科技 climbed 12.94%. The CRO sector also performed strongly, with A-share 万邦医药 surging over 14%, while 药明康德 and 凯莱英 moved steadily higher. Hong Kong-listed CRO names followed suit, with 金斯瑞生物科技 jumping 13.76% to HKD 37.04 and 维亚生物 adding 7.81%. Analysts at Industrial Securities noted that the global competitiveness of innovative drugs continues to strengthen, with out-licensing deals maintaining high momentum and a growing number of Co-Co models. As partnered assets enter overseas pivotal clinical trials, registrations, and commercialization phases, the sector's growth driver is shifting from valuation to earnings and globalization realization, with major deals and technological breakthroughs continuing to provide catalysts.
Novo Nordisk Bets on Anthropic to Accelerate AI Race
Novo Nordisk is extending its AI push into broader scientific research applications. The Danish drugmaker announced it will test Anthropic's science-specific platform, Claude Science, to tackle core challenges in drug discovery while strengthening its own AI-driven software development capabilities. CEO Mike Doustdar commented, "AI helps improve R&D productivity and shorten the path from research to marketed products. More importantly, AI tools can open up entirely new scientific opportunities, aiding reasoning and understanding of human biology and drug mechanisms." Anthropic's co-founder and CEO, Dario Amodei, said the collaboration aims to shorten research timelines and improve outcomes, "discovering drugs and therapies that can significantly improve human life."
Novo Nordisk is not alone. Major pharma companies including Lilly, Merck, and Roche have all made substantial bets on AI-enabled R&D. Novo Nordisk has previously partnered with OpenAI and built an AI innovation center with Amazon Web Services. Notably, despite rising investment, AI has yet to produce a single approved drug. The most direct benefits so far remain concentrated in automating routine work such as synthetic research, large dataset analysis, and clinical study design.
Lilly's TuneLab Expands Ecosystem, GenScript Closes AI Verification Loop
The collaboration with GenScript marks the latest expansion of Lilly's TuneLab platform ecosystem. As a core component of Lilly's Catalyze360 network, Lilly TuneLab provides participating companies with models trained on decades of Lilly's R&D data, including antibody developability and small molecule ADMET predictions. Participants can feed experimental results back into the platform, enabling continuous model refinement. Under the agreement, GenScript will offer wet lab services—protein expression, purification, and characterization—to TuneLab participants, using standardized, traceable protocols to validate AI-selected candidate sequences, connecting Lilly's computational predictions with GenScript's scalable experimental capabilities.
GenScript's rotating CEO, Shao Weihui, emphasized that completing experimental validation with greater efficiency and scale is the key to moving AI innovation into R&D practice. Chen Rui, president of GenScript's life sciences division, noted that the industry's next leap requires "connecting AI predictions with wet lab production and testing," bridging the critical gap between AI insights and therapeutic drug discovery. GenScript's bet on AIDD continues to pay off. The company's interim results for 2026 showed AIDD-related revenue doubling year-over-year, maintaining rapid growth for three consecutive half-year periods. To expand capacity, GenScript recently completed a ~HKD 2.35 billion placement, with approximately 70% of net proceeds earmarked for scaling AIDD platform capacity and infrastructure, including automated high-throughput wet labs and facility upgrades.
ByteDance-Backed Anew Labs Secures $290 Million in Funding
While big pharma accelerates its AI push, independent startups in AI drug development are also attracting strong capital backing. On September 16, Anew Labs, an AI drug discovery company, completed its first standalone funding round raising $290 million. Investors include Sequoia Capital China, IDG Capital, Hillhouse Ventures, 5Y Capital, and GSR Ventures, with participation from multiple domestic pharmaceutical conglomerates as strategic investors.
In June, media reports indicated ByteDance spun off its AI drug development unit into an independent entity, transferring core teams, algorithm platforms, and existing pipeline assets into a new vehicle led by former team lead Liu Kai, with a core team of around 50 members spanning AI algorithms and pharma expertise. The spun-off entity was branded as Anew Labs. Industry analysts suggest the funding aims to attract top talent and strategic resources around an independent structure, establishing suitable organizational incentives for AI-driven drug development. At the time of writing, neither Anew Labs nor ByteDance had commented on the reports.