Eli Lilly is doubling down on its partnership with Chinese tech outfit XtalPi, striking a new antibody development pact that could net a subsidiary of the artificial intelligence drug discovery shop as much as $345 million.
Lilly will pay Ailux, a subsidiary of XtalPi, upfront and near-term payments totaling in the double-digit millions for access to Ailux’s bispecific antibody engineering platform, according to a Nov. 5 release. The Big Pharma will be able to nominate an undisclosed number of target pairs for bispecific development and also has the option to license Ailux’s platform for internal use.
Additional development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments are also on the table, Ailux said in the release, bringing the total deal value to $345 million.
Lilly previously tapped XtalPi to discover potential new small-molecule drugs in a 2023 deal worth up to $250 million. Now, the Indianapolis drugmaker is expanding the partnership to include antibodies.
“Bispecific antibodies represent one of the most promising directions in today’s therapeutic landscape,” Alex (Yi) Li, CEO of Ailux and senior vice president of XtalPi, said in the release. “At Ailux, we have built AI-powered solutions that can rapidly engineer panels of monospecific antibodies into bispecifics with superior efficacy and developability. We are excited to collaborate with Lilly, a global leader in biotherapeutics, to advance next-generation molecules toward the clinic.”
Ailux’s antibody platform brings together advanced structural modeling, generative design and developability analytics to design new therapeutic candidates, the company said in the release.
Lilly is not the first Big Pharma to strike an accord with Ailux. Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Biotech licensed Ailux’s XtalFold biologics platform in October 2024 for an undisclosed amount, while Belgian biopharma UCB followed suit in January 2025.
Pfizer also has a longstanding relationship with XtalPi, including a 2018 AI modeling pact that was expanded in June of this year.
XtalPi was created in 2014 by quantum physicists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company now boasts locations in Somerville, Massachusetts and Runcorn, England, alongside sites in China including Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing.
Lilly has been going big on AI recently as part of a plan to embrace the technology as a “scientific collaborator,” rather than just a tool, the pharma’s chief AI officer, Thomas Fuchs, said on Oct. 28 when announcing a team-up with Nvidia to build the industry’s most powerful supercomputer.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:45 a.m. ET to properly reflect Ailux's official name and relationship to XtalPi.