GSK to pay $50M to use Noetik’s AI cancer models
In a deal that Noetik’s leaders call a new paradigm for AI-focused biotech, GSK is paying millions to license AI models rather than drug candidates.
The British pharma giant is paying $50 million in upfront and short-term milestone payments to Noetik, a South San Francisco-based AI biotech that is, in turn, providing non-exclusive licenses to two proprietary models it has respectively trained for lung and colon cancer. The deal will be officially announced Thursday morning, the companies exclusively told Endpoints News.
The agreement is the latest turn in the tug-and-pull between different philosophies on how sustainable biotech businesses can be built around AI. Many startups are building their own pipelines, applying their AI models internally in efforts to build drug programs that then catch the eye of pharma deal teams. But the Noetik deal suggests that some pharma giants, or at least GSK, have grown comfortable in paying significant sums to use AI models.
