Accelerating Industrialization! A Summit Reflects the Critical Leap of China's AI-Driven Drug Discovery from Technological Breakthrough to Clinical Realization

“Can AI truly develop drugs?” This question, which has lingered over the biopharmaceutical industry for many years, received a resounding and clear answer in Zhangjiang, Shanghai. Yesterday (June 12), the AI-Driven New Drug R&D Innovation Summit, hosted by XtalPi, was held in Zhangjiang Science City. Inside the venue, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, heads of pharmaceutical R&D,Frontier BiologicsFounders of technology companies gathered together. What they discussed was no longer the “AI proof-of-concept” of a few years ago, but the tangible realization of clinical value.

This seemingly ordinary shift in focus precisely reflects a critical leap for China’s AI-driven drug discovery industry: moving from algorithmic breakthroughs in the laboratory to tackling real-world challenges in clinical value.

As AI Becomes the “New Infrastructure,” Pharmaceutical Giants Have Quietly “Pivoted”

To the general public, the integration of AI and pharmaceuticals may still seem like science fiction. However, within the industry, a silent revolution has already been completed. At the conference, these cases were repeatedly cited: Eli Lilly, a global pharmaceutical giant, has introduced AI assistance into more than 75% of its research pipeline; the U.S. FDA has also formally accepted AI as a core tool in drug development from a regulatory perspective... This means that for a new drug, from target discovery to clinical advancement, AI is no longer "a decorative embellishment," but rather the core engine driving the wheel.

“The industrial era of AI-driven drug discovery has arrived.” This assertion by Dr. Ma Jian, Co-founder and CEO of XtalPi, was widely endorsed by conference attendees. He proposed that AI is evolving from a mere R&D tool into new foundational infrastructure for research and development, advancing from “point solutions” to “full-chain innovation.” “Future new drug development will undoubtedly be a systematic engineering endeavor, transforming greater scientific uncertainty into engineering certainty, thereby achieving large-scale industrial implementation and real-world validation.” Supporting this judgment is an impressive track record: as the first “specialized and innovative technology” company listed under Hong Kong’s Chapter 18C rules, XtalPi achieved its first full-year profitability in 2025, becoming the first Hong Kong-listed company in the AI for Science sector to turn a profit. For AI-driven drug development, once regarded as a “money-burning black hole,” profitability represents a highly symbolic industry inflection point.

LetRobot24/7 “Grinding,” AI Handles the “Thinking”

“How exactly does AI develop drugs? This is likely a concern for the general public. Dr. Zhang Peiyu, Chief Scientific Officer at XtalPi, lifted the veil of mystery with the concept of an ‘autonomous discovery system.’”

Traditional drug discovery relies on scientists’ inspiration and extensive, repetitive manual experimentation, resulting in long development cycles, high costs, and high failure rates. In contrast, XtalPi’s laboratories present a markedly different picture: nearly 300 AI-driven robotic experimental workstations operate autonomously around the clock, 24/7. The logic behind this system, known as the “dry–wet experimental closed loop,” is straightforward. In the “dry” phase, AI models perform predictions and large-scale screening in silico to generate hypotheses; in the “wet” phase, robots automatically conduct experiments to validate these hypotheses and feed the resulting data back into the AI for further learning. This iterative process creates a self-evolving “data flywheel.” The results are striking: compared with traditional manual approaches, the platform achieves an eightfold increase in experimental execution efficiency and a fortyfold increase in data collection efficiency. Dr. Zhang Peiyu shared an internal case study: using natural language descriptions, an AI agent generates R&D workflows and issues commands; physical intelligence then carries out the experimental operations, while the agent invokes tools to advance the experiments and analyze the results. This system has been deployed and validated within XtalPi, substantially improving molecular synthesis efficiency and success rates. It is akin to assembling a tireless workforce of “research laborers” that efficiently perform routine tasks under the direction of AI scientists, thereby transforming the substantial “scientific uncertainty” inherent in drug discovery into “engineering certainty.” This represents a hard-to-replicate “moat” that China is building in the AI-driven drug discovery sector.

Not Just “Drug Development,” but “Ecosystem Building” and “Value Creation”

Equally exciting are the “battle reports” from the clinical frontline: Xig Life Sciences, incubated by XtalPi, has advanced its investigational targeted therapy for diffuse gastric cancer into Phase II clinical trials and earned a nomination for the Galien Prize, known as the “Nobel Prize of the pharmaceutical industry.” Meanwhile, another partner company, Zhiqing Biotech, has completed patient enrollment for an innovative drug employing a “gene-pairing strike” strategy.

These cases clearly demonstrate that the value of AI is tangibly expanding from “optimizing processes” to “saving lives.” Feiran Zhou, Chief Financial Officer of XtalPi, pointed out that Chinese pharmaceutical companies are shedding the label of mere “cost advantage” and evolving into innovative assets with global transactional value. Last year, XtalPi secured a collaboration worth over $400 million with a renowned international pharmaceutical company, and this year it entered into a partnership nearing $6 billion with a new drug development company founded by a Harvard University professor. This marks the growing recognition of the “hard-tech” prowess of China’s AI-driven drug discovery sector by the world’s leading commercial forces.

Inside and outside the venue, discussions on “Ecological Resonance, Shared Value” continue. As AI compresses the drug development cycle from “a decade” to “a few years” and boosts success rates by even a few percentage points from “near-certain failure,” it offers priceless hope to patients awaiting new therapies.

Xinmin Evening News reporters have learned that XtalPi will continue to connect various industry stakeholders through an open ecosystem, leveraging its constantly evolving AI-driven robotic R&D infrastructure to address more pain points in new drug development and propel China’s AI-driven drug innovation from technological breakthroughs to the realization of clinical value.

Original Title: Industrialization Accelerates! A Summit Reflects the Critical Leap of China’s AI Drug Discovery from Technological Breakthroughs to Clinical Implementation