Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, and ByteDance are all investing in AI-driven pharmaceuticals, sending A-share innovative drug and CRO sectors soaring.

The AI-driven pharmaceutical wave is spurring a new wave of industry collaboration and directly driving a revaluation of upstream service sectors.

On September 16, Novo Nordisk announced a collaboration with Anthropic to accelerate new drug development using the latter's dedicated science platform, Claude Science. On the same day, Genscript Biotech announced a collaboration with Lilly's AI/machine learning drug discovery collaboration platform, Lilly TuneLab™, to provide wet laboratory validation services for its participating companies.

Furthermore, according to Hard AI News , Anew Labs, the AI pharmaceutical company spun off from ByteDance, has completed a $290 million Series A funding round, with leading institutions such as Sequoia China, Hillhouse Capital, and IDG Capital participating. These three news items, released in quick succession, have rapidly boosted market sentiment.

Driven by the aforementioned positive factors, the A-share innovative drug industry chain performed actively, with the biological reagents and raw materials concept leading the gains. Nearshore Protein hit its 20% daily limit, Baipusai rose 10.37%, and Yiqiao Shenzhou rose 8.45%; pharmaceutical materials company Jiankai Technology rose 12.94%. The CRO (Contract Research Organization) sector also performed strongly, with A-share Wanbang Pharmaceutical rising over 14%, and WuXi AppTec and Kailaiying steadily increasing; Hong Kong-listed CRO concepts followed suit, with Genscript Biotech surging 13.76% to HK$37.04, and Viva Biotech rising 7.81%. Xingye Securities stated that the global competitiveness of innovative drugs continues to strengthen, the high growth momentum of BD (Business Development) going overseas continues, the Co-Co model is increasing, and BD-enabled drugs are gradually entering the key overseas clinical, registration, and commercialization stages. The sector's driving force is shifting from valuation to "performance + globalization realization," and breakthroughs in blockbuster BD and new technologies will continue to act as catalysts.

Novo Nordisk bets on Anthropic, further accelerating the AI race among major pharmaceutical companies.

Novo Nordisk is extending its AI footprint to a wider range of scientific research scenarios. The Danish pharmaceutical company announced a collaboration with Anthropic to test its dedicated science platform, Claude Science, to address key scientific challenges in drug discovery, while also leveraging Anthropic models to enhance its AI-driven software development capabilities.

Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar stated, "AI can help us improve R&D productivity and shorten the path from research to market. More importantly, AI tools can also open up entirely new scientific opportunities, aiding in the reasoning and understanding of human biology and drug mechanisms." Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei added that the collaboration aims to shorten research cycles, improve R&D outcomes, and "discover drugs and therapies that can significantly improve human lives."

Novo Nordisk is not an isolated case. Many multinational pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly, Merck, and Roche, have heavily invested in AI-powered research and development. Novo Nordisk has also previously partnered with OpenAI and co-established an AI innovation center with Amazon Web Services. It's worth noting that despite continued investment, AI has yet to produce any approved drugs. The industry's most direct beneficiaries are currently focused on automating routine tasks such as synthesis research, big data analysis, and clinical trial design.

Eli Lilly's TuneLab ecosystem expands, GenScript completes the AI verification closed loop.

This collaboration with Genscript is a microcosm of the accelerated expansion of the Lilly TuneLab platform ecosystem. As a core component of Lilly's Catalyze360 ecosystem, Lilly TuneLab™ opens up models trained on decades of Lilly's R&D data to participating companies, covering antibody drug development and small molecule ADMET prediction capabilities. It also allows participating companies to feed their experimental results back to the platform, driving continuous model iteration.

According to the cooperation agreement, GenScript will provide wet laboratory services such as protein expression, purification and characterization analysis to TuneLab participating companies. Through standardized and traceable experimental procedures, AI-selected candidate sequences will be validated, thereby connecting Eli Lilly's computational prediction capabilities with GenScript's large-scale experimental capabilities.

Genscript Group Rotating CEO Shao Weihui stated that the key to driving AI innovation towards R&D practice lies in how to complete experimental verification more efficiently and on a larger scale. Genscript Life Sciences Business Group President Chen Rui also pointed out that the next leap forward in the industry "requires connecting AI prediction, wet laboratory production, and testing" to bridge the critical gap between AI insights and therapeutic drug discovery.

Genscript's bet on AIDD (AI-driven drug discovery) is continuing to pay off. The company's interim results for 2026 show that AIDD-related business more than doubled year-on-year, maintaining rapid growth for three consecutive half-years. To further strengthen its production capacity, Genscript recently completed a HK$2.35 billion Hong Kong stock placement, of which approximately 70% of the net proceeds will be used to expand AIDD platform capacity and infrastructure, including the construction and upgrading of automated high-throughput wet laboratories.

ByteDance-backed Anew Labs completes $290 million funding round

While major pharmaceutical companies are accelerating their expansion, independent startups in the AI-driven pharmaceutical industry are also receiving strong capital backing.

On September 16, AI-driven pharmaceutical company Anew Labs completed its first independent financing round, raising a total of $290 million. Investors in this round included Sequoia China, IDG Capital, Hillhouse Capital, 5Y Capital, and Gaorong Capital, with several domestic pharmaceutical industry groups participating as strategic investors.

In June of this year, media reports indicated that ByteDance spun off its AI-driven pharmaceutical business line, injecting the core team, algorithm platform, and existing pipeline assets into a new entity. The original team leader, Liu Kai, will be in charge, and the core team comprises approximately 50 people, including experts in both AI algorithms and pharmaceuticals. The new entity will be branded Anew Labs.

Industry analysts believe that Anew Labs' latest round of financing aims to attract more industry talent and strategic resources as an independent entity, and to establish a suitable organizational incentive system around its AI-driven pharmaceutical business.

As of press time, neither Anew Labs nor ByteDance had commented on the news.

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