Exscientia and Bristol Myers Squibb Enter Into a Multi-Target, AI-Driven Drug Discovery Partnership

Exscientia, an AI-driven pharma tech company in the clinical-stage announced today that it has signed a partnership agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. Exscientia's portfolio of shared assets will benefit from this extended partnership and will contribute to Bristol Myers Squibb's drug pipeline. The partnership will use artificial intelligence to speed up the development of small molecule therapeutic drug candidates in a variety of therapeutic fields, including oncology and immunology. The agreement is worth up to $1.2 billion including up to $50 million in upfront funding, and up to $125 million in near-to-mid-term future milestones, and other clinical, regulatory, and commercial payments. Exscientia will also receive tiered royalty based on the net sales of any marketed drug products as a result of the partnership.

This extended collaboration builds on Exscientia's existing partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb, which began in 2019 with Celgene before Bristol Myers Squibb purchased Celgene. Exscientia will be in charge of the AI design and experimental work needed to identify drug candidates for Bristol Myers Squibb as part of this partnership. Exscientia's AI-driven drug discovery platform will be used to create molecules and will deliver optimized compounds that meet complex design goals quickly and more efficiently than traditional drug discovery.

Exscientia's drug discovery platform has a proven track record and has been the one to advance AI-designed small molecule drug candidates into clinical studies. Exscientia has previously partnered with large pharmaceutical firms such as Bayer, Sanofi, and Dainippon Sumitomo, as well as several new biotech companies and the Gates Foundation, highlighting the company's reputation as the go-to partner for high-value AI-driven drug discovery. More than a dozen partnered or wholly-owned drugs are currently in development in the company. Exscientia recently raised $525 million in a Series D investment led by Softbank to expand its technology capability and proprietary drug pipeline.

About Exscientia
Exscientia's AI-driven, end-to-end drug discovery platform is designed to revolutionize the process of developing new drugs by creating therapeutics for areas of high unmet medical need that could benefit patients in much less time than industry standards. Exscientia is the first clinical-stage organization to bring AI-designed small molecules to the clinic, demonstrating AI's ability to transform the pharmaceutical industry.

At the molecular scale, drug design is precision engineering. Exscientia has built dedicated AI systems that effectively learn from a wide range of data and continuously re-apply enhanced information through design iterations to transform the industry. Candidate molecules satisfying complex therapeutic criteria are discovered with groundbreaking efficiency by Exscientia's AI systems, which learn faster and more efficiently than human-led efforts.