Major pharma companies moved from one‑off asset partnerships to platform investments, signing AI platform deals with startups like Chai Discovery, Noetik and Boltz to deploy models for biologics design, clinical‑outcome prediction and small‑molecule discovery. Chai’s agreement with Eli Lilly will create an exclusive model trained on Lilly’s proprietary data, reflecting a broader industry shift toward in‑house AI infrastructure. Industry executives told reporters that 2026 will be a deployment year—applying pretrained discovery engines across multiple discovery programs rather than single‑asset bets.