Verge Genomics rebranded as Verge Labs after reporting an early-stage clinical trial failure for its AI-designed ALS candidate VRG50635. The company said it laid off about 90% of its workforce as it changed course and will now focus on providing drug developers with data and tools to identify targets, rather than operating solely as a discovery-to-clinic model. Verge described the ALS program as targeting PIKfyve and measuring neurofilament light chain, stating the biomarker increased and the drug did not produce the desired effect. CEO Alice Zhang said early setbacks are part of an iterative learning cycle, but the company’s new business model emphasizes monetizing datasets and insights. The pivot is a reminder to the market that AI-discovered programs still require hard validation, and that capital allocation is increasingly tied to demonstrable pathways from model outputs to clinical biology.