AMD is going head-to-head with Nvidia in AI-backed drug discovery with new deal

MW AMD is going head-to-head with Nvidia in AI-backed drug discovery with new deal

By Ciara Linnane

AMD is investing $20 million in AI drug startup Absci, which will use AMD chips and software

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is going head-to-head with bigger rival Nvidia Corp. in artificial intelligence-backed drug discovery with news of a new partnership and investment in startup Absci Corp.

Absci's stock $(ABSI)$ soared 54% early Wednesday, after the company said it has received a $20 million investment from new partner AMD to advance its pipeline.

Vancouver, Wash.-based Absci said the investment is structured as a private investment in public equity, or PIPE deal.

AMD will support Absci in creating better biologics for patients using its chips and software, reducing infrastructure costs and speeding up innovation cycles.

It's AMD's $(AMD)$ first investment in the healthcare space, which is already a target of market leader Nvidia. $(NVDA)$

"AMD high-performance compute will enable us to further the development of next-generation antibody therapeutics, and we are excited about the potential that this partnership holds to accelerate the future of drug discovery," Absci Chief Executive Sean McClain said in prepared remarks.

Drug discovery is a key area for AI, given the speed at which models trained on massive datasets can tackle a variety of tasks. Last year, Nvidia said it was doubling down on AI-powered drug discovery via expanded partnerships with Amgen Inc. $(AMGN)$ and Recursion Pharmaceuticals Inc. $(RXRX)$.

Amgen subsidiary deCODE Genetics is building out an Nvidia supercomputer to create genomics "foundation models," the company announced at an event last January.

Recursion, meanwhile, has adopted Nvidia's own generative-AI platform for drug discovery, BioNeMo. The platform's computational methods help scientists lean on generative AI to cut down on experiments or even replace them altogether, Nvidia said.

Absci says its scalable wet lab technologies and AI can accelerate the time to clinic and increase the probability of successful trials by simultaneously optimizing multiple drug characteristics important to both development and therapeutic benefit.

"With the data to train, the AI to create, and the wet lab to validate, we can screen billions of cells per week, allowing us to go from AI-designed candidates to wet lab-validated candidates in as little as six weeks," the company says on its website.

Traditional drug discovery is lengthy and expensive. Roughly 90% of drug candidates that reach the clinical-trial stage fail, and for successful drugs, the path to the U.S. market typically takes 10 to 15 years and costs about $2.5 billion, making a faster AI-propelled route attractive.

Absci's stock has fallen 26% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 SPX has gained 24%.

-Ciara Linnane

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January 08, 2025 08:48 ET (13:48 GMT)

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