CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Inceptive Nucleics have entered into a strategic collaboration valued at up to $2 billion to accelerate the discovery of RNAi therapeutics using artificial intelligence.
The agreement includes $30 million in upfront consideration, consisting of cash and the purchase of Inceptive equity. Inceptive is also eligible to receive additional payments tied to preclinical, regulatory and commercial sales milestones.
The companies said the partnership will combine Alnylam’s RNAi platform and more than two decades of proprietary siRNA data with Inceptive’s generative AI models and expertise in foundation models. The goal is to accelerate the design of new RNAi medicines, expand therapeutic possibilities and improve the efficiency of drug discovery.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Inceptive to push the boundaries of what is possible in the discovery of RNAi medicines,” said Yvonne Greenstreet, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Alnylam. “Inceptive stands apart as one of the most visionary companies working at the intersection of AI and biology. It is led by pioneers of the AI revolution and driven by an ambitious mission to fundamentally reinvent how RNA medicines are designed. Together, we have an extraordinary opportunity to accelerate the creation of transformative medicines with a speed, ingenuity, and sophistication that simply has not been possible before.”
Alnylam said it plans to integrate Inceptive’s generative AI models into its research and development engine as part of its Alnylam 2030 strategy, which includes ambitious pipeline expansion goals.
In exploratory work between the companies, Inceptive’s foundation model characterized siRNA molecules within weeks and generated biological insights from relatively small datasets, according to the companies. siRNA molecules are the active ingredient in RNAi therapeutics.
“Most drug design still works through a process of trial and error, testing thousands of molecules and hoping something sticks,” said Jakob Uszkoreit, Inceptive co-founder and CEO. “Inceptive was built on a different premise: that life follows rules of such complexity that only AI can learn them. Alnylam’s breakthrough platform and scientific vision are an ideal match for AI. Together, we’re not just accelerating drug discovery; we’re changing the way we understand and improve life.”
The collaboration is designed to advance siRNA design by modeling target mRNAs, exploring sequence space and assessing novel chemical modifications that could improve potency and efficacy. The companies said the work is also intended to predict top-performing therapeutic candidates in preclinical models for potential further development by Alnylam.
Alnylam’s RNAi platform has produced six approved drugs and is supported by more than 20 years of proprietary siRNA data. Inceptive develops AI models for sequence-based medicines, including RNAi therapeutics.
The collaboration also gives Alnylam access to Inceptive’s AI expertise and talent, including Uszkoreit, co-inventor of the Transformer architecture, and other researchers focused on scalable, AI-enabled wet-lab training data generation methods.
