AstraZeneca pays insitro up to $1.5 billion to find AI drug targets for liver and heart disease

AstraZeneca and insitro on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026, announced a worldwide exclusive AI drug-discovery collaboration for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) and cardiomyopathies, with insitro receiving $40 million upfront and eligibility for up to about $1.46 billion in milestones plus single-digit royalties.

Big Pharma is not buying another chatbot. It is paying an AI biology company nine figures in milestones to pick better drug targets for two messy, underdiagnosed diseases. The hard part of medicine has always been knowing what to aim at. If Virtual Human can turn patient heterogeneity into causal targets, the clinical pipeline gets a quieter, sharper front end.

AstraZeneca and insitro announced a worldwide exclusive research collaboration and licensing agreement for novel targets and therapeutics in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, known as MASH, a fatty-liver disease that can scar the liver, and in cardiomyopathies, diseases of the heart muscle. Those lines are both companies'.

insitro receives $40 million upfront. It is eligible for up to about $1.46 billion in potential discovery, development, and commercial milestones, plus single-digit royalties on potential global commercial sales. Those figures are both companies'.

insitro will apply its Virtual Human AI platform — software that models disease biology — to identify causal disease biology in both indications and to advance AstraZeneca-nominated targets from discovery through development candidate, the last research step before human trials. AstraZeneca will lead clinical development, regulatory work, and commercialization, and gets exclusive worldwide rights to advance selected programs. The deal does not put drugs from this collaboration into the clinic today. Those lines are both companies'.

Daphne Koller, insitro's founder and chief executive, described MASH and cardiomyopathies as prevalent, underdiagnosed, heterogeneous diseases, and said high-content data plus AI can reveal causal drivers. Heterogeneous, here, means the same diagnosis can look different from patient to patient. Sharon Barr, executive vice president and head of BioPharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca, talked about selecting the right target and using AI to identify biological drivers. Those lines are theirs, on the company releases.

insitro's release says the company has raised more than $750 million. Fierce Biotech notes prior insitro partners including Gilead in 2019, Bristol Myers Squibb from 2020, and Lilly in 2024, and that AstraZeneca has other AI deals including Algen, the Modella AI acquisition, and Owkin. The $750 million-plus figure is insitro's. The partner history is Fierce Biotech's.

The picture is insitro founder and CEO Daphne Koller speaking on stage in a dark jacket. It is a Wikimedia Commons photograph from Collision Conf. The frame does not print a calendar date.

In plain terms, AstraZeneca said on Thursday that it is paying insitro $40 million now, and up to about $1.46 billion later if the work hits discovery, development, and sales milestones, to use insitro's Virtual Human platform to pick drug targets for MASH and heart-muscle disease. AstraZeneca runs the clinic and keeps the rights. No drug from this deal is in patients yet.