en.Wedoany.com Reported - Owkin and Sanofi have expanded their artificial intelligence collaboration through a multi-year agreement to jointly develop AI-powered biopharmaceutical agents for drug research and development.
Under the agreement, Owkin will lead the construction of AI agents for Sanofi. These agents are deployed via Owkin's AI scientist platform, K Pro, under a five-year license. The companies stated that these agents act as intelligent assistants capable of autonomously executing complex tasks in drug R&D. K Pro integrates multimodal patient data with specialized biological AI systems to support decision-making across the pharmaceutical value chain, from early discovery to clinical development. Thomas Clozel, CEO and co-founder of Owkin, said in a statement that this marks a shift toward truly embedded AI based on their collaboration. He noted that Owkin believes with K Pro, Sanofi can further leverage agent systems in its workflows, unlocking the full value of data to accelerate smarter decisions in drug development. Owkin stated that K Pro is part of its effort to develop biological artificial superintelligence, aimed at automating complex scientific tasks to help researchers make faster and more precise decisions in drug discovery and development.
The agreement builds on a partnership between the two companies dating back to 2021. At that time, Sanofi announced a $180 million equity investment in Owkin and initiated a strategic oncology collaboration focused on discovery and development projects for four cancer types. The collaboration aimed to use AI and federated learning to support disease modeling, clinical trial design, and biomarker detection while protecting the privacy of large datasets from hospitals and research institutions. Owkin and Sanofi later expanded the collaboration into immunology, using AI and multimodal data to support drug targeting, identify disease indications, and match patient subgroups with specific drugs in Sanofi's immunology pipeline. The new agreement comes as life science companies explore agentic AI to move beyond isolated analytical tools and embed AI systems into broader enterprise workflows. Sanofi describes itself as an R&D-driven, AI-empowered biopharmaceutical company with the goal of shortening the time from discovery to treatment. The company has also highlighted AI initiatives in R&D and manufacturing, including embedding AI into research workflows and using digital technologies in manufacturing and supply chain operations.
Sanofi has also pursued other AI collaborations. In 2024, the company announced a partnership with Formation Bio and OpenAI to develop AI-powered software for drug development, aiming to integrate data, software, and fine-tuned models to build customized tools across the drug development lifecycle. Emmanuel Frenehard, Chief Digital Officer of Sanofi, said in a statement that Sanofi continues to invest in cutting-edge AI solutions with the potential to accelerate and improve decision-making across the drug development lifecycle. By implementing specialized agent systems into workflows, the goal is to empower teams to operate with greater speed, depth, and confidence while continuing to deliver transformative outcomes for patients. Owkin launched K Pro in 2025 as an agentic AI co-pilot for biomedical R&D. The company stated that the platform is designed to help pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, and investors make decisions in discovery and development through natural language interaction and multimodal biomedical data. Prior to the Sanofi agreement, Owkin recently completed another K Pro deal. In May of this year, Owkin announced a multi-year licensing agreement with AstraZeneca to build biopharmaceutical agents for competitive intelligence and decision-making workflows.
The use of AI in drug development is also drawing increasing regulatory attention. The U.S. FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research noted a significant increase in drug application submissions involving AI components, spanning nonclinical, clinical, post-market, and manufacturing stages. In 2025, the agency issued draft guidance on the use of AI to support regulatory decisions for drugs and biologics. For Owkin, the collaboration with Sanofi advances its broader goal of using biological AI systems to support pharmaceutical R&D.
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