CEPI has unveiled an AI-powered “pandemic preparedness engine” aimed at accelerating the path from threat identification to vaccine readiness under its 100-day mission. Speaking at BioProcess International Europe 2026 in Vienna, vaccine expert Renske Hesselink said CEPI is using AI to compress key bottlenecks across target selection, development hypothesis testing, and scale-up planning. CEPI’s stated goal is to make safe and effective vaccine options available within 100 days of identifying a pandemic threat—an explicit response to the operational lag seen in COVID-19. Hesselink framed the effort around three application areas: supporting researchers on the ground, directing AI investment toward manufacturing and supply chains, and helping protect against generated threats. The program is positioned as a rapid-response toolset—described as “almost a ChatGPT” for vaccine developers—meant to speed decision-making with structured data and analysis workflows. For the biotech industry, the emphasis is on execution: linking AI outputs to downstream authorization pathways and manufacturing at scale, not just model development.