BenevolentAI

London-based Benevolent AI operates a proprietary drug discovery platform with four key interconnected focus areas covering the entire drug development process: knowledge, target identification, molecular design, and precision medicine. The company claims it can make the early stages of drug discovery 60% shorter. Its current strategy is to partner with larger pharmaceutical players to jointly discover drug compounds for common diseases such as Alzheimer’s and other neurological conditions. As of March 2024, the company had five ongoing drug programs in its pipeline. 

The company has repurposed Baricitinib (along with Eli Lilly) as a potential treatment for Covid-19 and received emergency use authorization (EUA) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November 2020. The company claims the process of tracing Baricitinib as a drug candidate took 90 minutes of computing time and an additional three days of human effort.

The company went public on the Euronext Amsterdam Exchange in April 2022 via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger.

Key customers and partnerships

The company has signed multiple partnerships with pharma giants, including the following:  Merck (September 2023) to identify and develop new compounds against three targets; Novartis (September 2019) to use BenevolentAI's technology platform to analyze clinical trial and experimental data; and AstraZeneca (April 2019) to accelerate drug development using AI. Through this collaboration, BenevolentAI had identified three novel targets that were added to AstraZeneca’s drug portfolio. The partnership was later extended in 2022, and resulted in adding novel targets for heart failure and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) to the discovery portfolio in June 2024.

The company also partnered with non-profit R&D organization Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) in April 2022 to jointly develop dengue therapies. In September 2023 , the company entered a strategic partnership with pharmaceutical company Merck to discover drug compounds for oncology, neurology, and immunology targets.