Pharmaceutical companies are exploring the use of AI throughout all stages of their operations. Keeping up can feel difficult but is hugely beneficial if you’re involved in the industry in any capacity.
On this page, we’re keeping an ongoing timeline of AI developments in pharma so you don’t have to.
You’ll find links to regulator updates and news from companies.
It’s the perfect place to easily keep up to date.
(P.S if you know of something that should be included but isn’t yet, leave a note in the comments or in the blue chat bubble. Thanks!)
2026
20th May 2026
BMS announced the agreement which will see Claude used in departments including research, clinical development, manufacturing, commercial, and corporate functions.
The company announced 3 priority areas:
- Accelerating engineering with Claude Code
- Embedding agents into the workflows that move drugs forward
- Connecting Claude to the institutional knowledge that lives across BMS
“By giving employees access to Claude’s agentic capabilities — connected to thousands of data sources across the company — BMS is creating a single intelligence layer that can generate a clinical study report from underlying trial data, surface the right scientific context from decades of internal research, or trace the root cause of a manufacturing deviation in real time”
27th April 2026
J&J sees AI halving the time to generate drug development leads
Johnson & Johnson outline how they’re using AI to:
- Halve the time it takes to generate new leads for developing drugs
- Determine when to add solvent at the appropriate time and temperature during manufacutring
- Streamline preparation of documents for regulators, citing that clinic trial reporting time has gone from “700 hours to about 15 minutes,”
“Swanson said rather than people being replaced by the technology, he sees using AI as an additional skill for the company’s employees.”
22nd April 2026
MSD and Google Cloud Partner to Accelerate Agentic AI Enterprise Transformation
MSD announce partnership with Google Cloud to begin use of an agentic platform in areas including research & development (R&D), manufacturing, commercial, and corporate functions.
“This includes deploying Gemini Enterprise across end-to-end R&D workflows, optimizing manufacturing through predictive analytics and intelligent automation, enhancing commercial and patient engagement with data-driven personalization and leveraging AI-powered automation in corporate functions to power productivity.”
20th April 2026
Boehringer Ingelheim launches AI Accelerator in London
Boehringer Ingelheim announce the launch of a new centre for AI and machine learning in King’s Cross, London.
“The decision to establish a presence in London reflects the UK’s strong legacy in AI and its continued commitment to advancing data‑driven innovation in life sciences and healthcare. By locating within the Knowledge Quarter, we aim to collaborate closely with leading academic institutions, technology partners and research organisations.”
14th April 2026
Novo Nordisk and OpenAI partner to transform how medicines are discovered and delivered
Novo Nordisk outline plans to implement OpenAI’s AI capabilities throughout the business, from drug discovery to commercial operations.
“The partnership will apply advanced AI capabilities to analyse complex datasets, identify promising drug candidates, and reduce the time required to move from research to patient.”
8th April 2026
MHRA expands AI Airlock programme with a £3.6 million funding boost over three years
The UK regulator, the MHRA, announced a 3-year extension of “the UK’s first regulatory sandbox for Artificial Intelligence as a Medical Device (AIaMD)”.
“The newly approved multi‑year funding will enable the AI Airlock programme to scale beyond the constraints of yearly financial cycles. This will support more ambitious, longer-term testing models while helping to create a more sustainable regulatory pathway for future AI medical technologies.”
2nd April 2026
FDA highlights “Inappropriate Use of Artificial Intelligence in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing” in a Warning Letter.
“If you use AI as an aid in document creation, you must review the AI generated documents to ensure they were accurate and actually compliant with CGMP. Your failure to do so is a violation of 21 CFR 211.22(c). Overreliance on artificial intelligence for your drug manufacturing operations was also documented during the inspection.”
23rd March 2026
insitro and Bristol Myers Squibb Collaboration Expanded with Nomination of New Targets
Bristol Myers Squibb expands its collaboration with AI therapeutics company, insitro. The companies first partnered in 2020, and extended their agreement in October 2025. They’ve now announced additional targets for the treatment of ALS.
“By integrating massive-scale, human-derived cell data with machine learning, the Virtual Human™ allows for the mapping of disease drivers with unprecedented resolution”
16th March 2026
Roche announce the opening of an AI factory that is contributing to operations across the company, with examples shared from:
- R&D
- Manufacturing
- Diagnostics
- Digital pathology
- Digital health
“With the addition of 2,176 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, Roche now operates the pharmaceutical industry’s largest announced hybrid-cloud AI factory, totaling more than 3,500 GPUs.”
14th January 2026
Guiding principles of good AI practice in drug development
A joint publication from the EMA and FDA that outlines current best practice for AI use in the development of medicines.
“This document outlines a common set of principles to inform, enhance, and promote the use of AI for generating evidence across all phases of the drug product life cycle.”
12th January 2026
NVIDIA and Lilly Announce Co-Innovation AI Lab to Reinvent Drug Discovery In the Age of AI
Lilly announce an AI lab for co-innovation with NVIDIA that aims to explore and implement AI solutions to persisting challenges within the pharmaceutical industry.
“The lab brings together Lilly’s world-leading expertise in discovering, developing and manufacturing medicines with NVIDIA’s leadership in AI, accelerated computing and AI infrastructure. The two companies will invest up to $1 billion in talent, infrastructure and compute over five years to support the new AI co-innovation lab.”
9th January 2026
Chai Discovery announces “partnership with Eli Lilly and Company to accelerate the discovery of next-generation therapeutics”
“Through this collaboration, we’re deploying our models to Lilly’s scientists to help them build the next generation of medicine.”
1st January 2026
FDA draft guidance.
“This guidance provides recommendations to sponsors and other interested parties on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to produce information or data intended to support regulatory decision-making regarding safety, effectiveness, or quality for drugs. Specifically, this guidance provides a risk-based credibility assessment framework that may be used for establishing and evaluating the credibility of an AI model for a particular context of use (COU).”
2025
18th December 2025
Regulation of AI in Healthcare
MHRA issues call for evidence.
The MHRA is seeking evidence on the regulation of AI in healthcare to inform the recommendations of the National Commission into the Regulation of AI in Healthcare.
10th December 2025
Disruption Risk Puts AI at the Top of C-Suite Agenda, According to Bloomberg Intelligence Survey
Pharmaceuticals is one of nine industries included in this survey. Top line findings for pharma include:
- Magnitude of AI Disruption – High
- Near-term AI Sales Potential – High
- Near-term Headcount Cuts – Low
- Near-term Rise in Operating Costs – High/Very High
- Use of AI Tools Across Organisation – Medium/High
“Key sector findings from the report include… Pharmaceuticals: Drug development is ripe for disruption;10-30% of preclinical work may shift to AI; drug development costs expected to decrease by an average of 16%; time to market for novel drugs could decrease by 6-18 months.”
28th October 2025
Lilly announces the building of the most powerful pharmaceutical industry supercomputer. Uses will be across a range of activities, including:
- Faster drug discovery via training on “millions of experiments”
- Shortening development times
- Identification of biomarkers for more personalized care via advanced medical imaging
- Improving manufacturing efficiency and reduced downtime via digital twins together and NVIDIA’s robotic technologies
“In accordance with Lilly’s existing sustainability commitments, including carbon neutrality by 2030, the supercomputer will run on 100% renewable electricity within existing Lilly facilities and use Lilly’s existing chilled water infrastructure for liquid cooling.”
28th October 2025
Johnson & Johnson to Advance Robotics Development with NVIDIA Isaac for Healthcare
J&J are creating virtual environments through AI to assist with training. Examples include:
- Virtual operating rooms
- Simulated patient anatomy and clinical scenarios
“Johnson & Johnson MedTech… today announced advancements in developing the company’s robotics systems with physical artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that create simulated environments to accelerate future product innovation, optimize clinical workflows, and improve training for clinical teams.”
16th October 2025
Thermo Fisher and OpenAI collaborate to accelerate drug development through AI integration
Thermo Fisher is introducing AI across its clinical trials.
“Open AI’s advanced capabilities will initially be deployed… to significantly improve the cycle time of clinical trials and accelerate the time to bring new medicines to market.”
11th June 2025
NVIDIA Partners With Novo Nordisk and DCAI to Advance Drug Discovery
Novo Nordisk is using these partnerships to create customized AI models and agents for early research and clinical development, as well as advanced simulations and physical AI technologies.
“Novo Nordisk researchers will focus on several AI research programs, including using single-cell models to predict cellular responses to drug candidates and structures, as well as designing models to build molecules with drug-like properties.”
18th April 2025
Eli Lilly and BigHat Biosciences ink AI antibody discovery deal
Lilly have agreed a deal to co-develop next-generation antibody therapeutics thats covers up to two antibody programmes.
“[BigHat’s] technology is designed to optimise multiple antibody attributes simultaneously – including affinity, specificity, immunogenicity, and manufacturability – with the goal of accelerating the development of biologics with improved therapeutic profiles.”
10th April 2025
FDA Announces Plan to Phase Out Animal Testing Requirement for Monoclonal Antibodies and Other Drugs
The FDA hopes that the new approaches – including AI modelling – will lead to:
- Improve drug safety
- Accelerated evaluation process
- Reduced animal experimentation
- Lowered research and development (R&D) costs
- Ultimately, reduced drug prices
“The FDA’s animal testing requirement will be reduced, refined, or potentially replaced using a range of approaches, including AI-based computational models of toxicity and cell lines and organoid toxicity testing in a laboratory setting (so-called New Approach Methodologies or NAMs data)”
3rd February 2025
Software and artificial intelligence (AI) as a medical device
MHRA updates guidance.
“Software (including AI) plays an essential part in health and social care. In the UK, many of these products are regulated as medical devices (or as in vitro diagnostic medical devices (IVDs).”
2024
24th September 2024
“The collaboration will combine The Generate Platform, which integrates machine learning with high-throughput experimental validation, with Novartis expertise and capabilities in target biology, biologics development, and clinical development to create novel therapeutics and to accelerate the pace of drug discovery and development.”
21st May 2024
Sanofi, Formation Bio and OpenAI announce first-in-class AI collaboration
“The three teams will bring together data, software and tuned models to develop custom, purpose-built solutions across the drug development lifecycle. This represents a first collaboration of its kind within the pharma and life sciences industries.”
30th April 2024
MHRA publishes: Impact of AI on the regulation of medical products
“These principles encompass safety, security and robustness; appropriate transparency and explainability; fairness, accountability and governance; and contestability and redress.”
24th April 2024
Moderna and OpenAI Collaborate To Advance mRNA Medicine
“Moderna embeds OpenAI’s generative AI tools throughout its organization and sees early success with broad adoption of ChatGPT Enterprise.”
8th January 2024
Amgen to Build Generative AI Models for Novel Human Data Insights and Drug Discovery
“[The system] will be used to build a human diversity atlas for drug target and disease-specific biomarker discovery, providing vital diagnostics for monitoring disease progression and regression. The system will also help develop AI-driven precision medicine models, potentially enabling individualized therapies for patients with serious diseases.”
7th January 2024
Isomorphic Labs kicks off 2024 with two pharmaceutical collaborations
“Isomorphic Labs announces strategic collaborations with two of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, Eli Lilly and Company and Novartis… Both collaborations are multi-target, focused on small molecules”
About the Author
Claire Wilson
Content Marketing and Career Coaching
Claire runs GetReskilled’s Advanced Career Coaching Programme – our specially devised job hunting course that helps our trainees take that final step into employment by leading them through the job hunting process. She is extremely enthusiastic about helping people reach their final goal of employment in their new career path.
Claire has a BSc (Hons) in Medical Biology from Edinburgh University and spent 7 years working in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.
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