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

(Source: Shangguan News)

“Can AI truly develop drugs?” This question, which has lingered over the biopharmaceutical industry for years, has received a resounding and clear answer in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang.

Yesterday (June 12), the AI-Driven New Drug R&D Innovation Summit, hosted by XtalPi, was held in Zhangjiang Science City. In the venue, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, heads of pharmaceutical R&D,Frontier BiologicsFounders of technology companies gather together. What they are discussing is no longer the “AI proof-of-concept” of a few years ago, but the tangible realization of clinical value.

AI-Driven Drug Discovery Innovation Summit Hosted by XtalPi Held in Zhangjiang, Shanghai

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 “New Infrastructure,” Pharmaceutical Giants Have Quietly “Pivoted”

To the general public, the integration of AI and pharmaceuticals may still seem like science fiction. But 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 incorporated AI assistance into more than 75% of its investigational pipeline; the U.S. FDA has also formally embraced AI as a core tool in drug development from a regulatory perspective... This signifies that, in the journey of a new drug from target discovery to clinical advancement, AI is no longer a “nice-to-have embellishment,” but the core engine driving the wheel.

Dr. Ma Jian, Co-founder and CEO of XtalPi, delivered the opening address

“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 attendees. He proposed that AI is evolving from a mere R&D tool into new foundational infrastructure for research and development, advancing from “point-specific breakthroughs” to “full-chain innovation.”

“Future new drug development will undoubtedly be a systematic engineering endeavor, transforming greater scientific uncertainty into engineering certainty to achieve large-scale industrial implementation and real-world validation.”

Underpinning this assessment is an impressive track record: as the first “specialized and sophisticated technology” company listed under Hong Kong’s Chapter 18C rules, XtalPi achieved full-year profitability for the first time in 2025, becoming the first HKEX-listed company in the AI for Science sector to turn a profit. For AI-driven drug discovery, once regarded as a “bottomless money pit,” this profitability marks a highly symbolic industry inflection point.

LetRobot24/7 “Grunt Work,” AI Handles the “Thinking”

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

Dr. Peiyu Zhang, Chief Scientific Officer of XtalPi

Traditional drug development relies on scientists’ inspiration and extensive, repetitive manual experiments, resulting in long cycles, high costs, and high failure rates. In contrast, XtalPi’s laboratories present a markedly different scenario: nearly 300 AI-powered robotic experimental workstations operate autonomously 24/7.

This system, known as the “dry-wet experimental closed loop,” operates on a straightforward logic: the “dry” component involves AI models performing predictions and large-scale screening in silico to generate hypotheses; the “wet” component entails robots automatically conducting experiments to validate these hypotheses and feeding the resulting data back into the AI for further learning. This iterative process creates a self-evolving “data flywheel.”

The results are remarkable. Compared to traditional manual methods, this platform has increased experimental execution efficiency by 8-fold and data collection efficiency by 40-fold. Dr. Zhang Peiyu shared an internal case study: research and development instructions were generated by an Agent based on natural language descriptions; physical intelligence then performed the experimental operations, while the Agent invoked tools to advance the experiments and analyze the results. This system has been deployed and validated within XtalPi, significantly improving both the efficiency and success rate of molecular synthesis.

This is akin to assembling a tireless workforce of “research laborers” who, under the command of AI scientists, efficiently perform repetitive tasks, thereby transforming the substantial “scientific uncertainties” in drug development into “engineering certainties.” This constitutes a highly difficult-to-replicate “moat” that China has built in the AI-driven drug discovery sector.

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

Equally exciting are the “battle reports” from the clinical frontline: XtalPi’s spin-off, XiGe Life Sciences, has advanced its investigational targeted therapy for diffuse gastric cancer into Phase II clinical trials and earned a nomination for the Galien Prize, often hailed as the “Nobel Prize of the pharmaceutical industry.” Meanwhile, another partner, 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.

XtalPi to Leverage Open Ecosystem and Evolving AI Robotics Infrastructure to Address Drug Discovery Challenges, Advancing Chinese AI-Driven Pharmaceutical Innovation from Technological Breakthroughs to Clinical Value

Original Title: "Accelerating Industrialization! A Summit Reflects the Critical Leap of China's AI Drug Discovery from Technological Breakthrough to Clinical Application"

Column Editor: Yi Rong | Title Image Source: Provided by the Organizer

Source: Author: Xinmin Evening News, Gao Yang