AstraZeneca signed a $1.5 billion licensing and drug discovery collaboration with insitro to apply AI-driven target discovery to metabolic dysfunction–associated steatohepatitis (MASH) and cardiomyopathies. AstraZeneca will pay an upfront amount and could make additional development and commercial milestones tied to selected programs. The collaboration centers on insitro’s Virtual Human platform, which integrates large-scale human and cellular data with AI target identification and drug design. AstraZeneca will nominate targets into discovery through development candidate selection, then use its clinical and regulatory capabilities to advance the programs. The deal underscores a growing shift toward outsourcing early, target-selection work to AI platforms—especially in complex cardiometabolic biology where causal biology and patient stratification remain high barriers.