London drug discovery startup Relation Therapeutics is set to receive up to $110M from GSK as the pharma giant expands an existing AI collaboration.
The pact, announced July 30, will produce large-scale datasets of human genetic perturbations with time-resolved multi-omics readouts. Those datasets feed the development, validation and training of Relation’s AI models, including MORGAN, its neural-network-based foundation model for cell biology.
GSK gains worldwide development and commercialization rights to any targets that surface from the work. Relation CEO David Roblin framed the effort as a way to build models with greater confidence in therapeutic targets, using data drawn from physiologically relevant human disease systems.
The latest agreement extends a relationship that began in December 2024 with two collaborations spanning fibrotic disease and osteoarthritis. Those earlier deals carried a combined $45M upfront, a $15M equity stake, up to $63M in success-based payments, and milestone payments averaging around $200M per target with tiered royalties.
The expansion is another sign that pharma values perturbation data, the raw material AI-first drug hunters are increasingly selling to bigger partners.
