Issue #25 · The Catch-Up Issue

Weeks 24-25 · June 8-21, 2026

The dealmaking machine is back at full health. An AI drug-development tool maker goes private, two of pharma's biggest names buy AI-generated data, and a TCE pact tops $800M. Here is what moved over the past two weeks.

Top Deals

Altaris / Simulations Plus · $375M
Private-equity firm Altaris is taking AI drug-development software maker Simulations Plus (NASDAQ: SLP) private. A clean read on how the public market is valuing pure-play AIDD tooling right now. FierceBiotech, Jun 16
Jazz Pharmaceuticals / AbCellera · up to $820M / drug
T-cell engager (TCE) discovery and development pact built on AbCellera's antibody-discovery platform; ~$792M biobucks plus per-program value. Validation for AI/ML-enabled antibody engines. FierceBiotech, Jun 16
Merck / Protillion Biosciences · $510M biobucks
Data-generation partnership: Merck is paying for the high-quality, purpose-built biological datasets that train discovery models. Confirms the thesis that proprietary data, not algorithms, is the scarce input. FierceBiotech, Jun 16
Biogen / RayThera · $1B
Buyout for preclinical immunology assets, part of Biogen's VC-mindset pipeline rebuild. Big pharma is buying early-stage science aggressively again. FierceBiotech, Jun 18

Watchlist Moves

AbCellera (ABCL)
Headline AI-platform validation with the Jazz TCE deal (see above). Among the clearest commercial signals for an AIDD watchlist name this fortnight.
Adaptive Biotechnologies
Plotting to split its Pfizer-partnered drug-discovery unit from the diagnostics business, sharpening the AI/immune-medicine focus. FierceBiotech, Jun 16
Eli Lilly (LLY)
M&A spree continues with the acquisition of non-opioid pain drugmaker 4E Therapeutics. Lilly (an Insilico partner) keeps deploying capital into externally-sourced assets. FierceBiotech, Jun 16

Sector Read

Theme of the Fortnight
M&A REOPENS
Signal
Risk-on

PwC declared the "biopharma ecosystem back to full health" on M&A volume and value (FierceBiotech, Jun 16). For AI drug discovery the tell is not the headline number but the type of spend: data-generation deals (Merck/Protillion), platform-licensing pacts (Jazz/AbCellera), and a take-private of a tooling vendor (Simulations Plus). Buyers are paying for proprietary data and validated engines, not slideware.

This Issue's Analysis

Data Is the Deal: Why Pharma Is Buying Datasets, Not Algorithms

Two of the fortnight's defining transactions, Merck-Protillion and the AbCellera engine behind the Jazz pact, point at the same conclusion. The scarce, defensible input in AI drug discovery is purpose-built biological data and the longitudinal record of what molecules actually did, not the model architecture, which is increasingly commoditized. Companies that own the 0-to-DC data trail keep widening the moat...

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Editor's Note

This catch-up issue spans June 8-21, 2026 and follows Issue #19. Deal items and dollar figures are sourced from FierceBiotech reporting (links inline) and reflect the AI / AIDD-relevant subset of a broad M&A wave. The ranked Top-10 papers section is paused for this catch-up issue pending a live literature pull; it returns next issue.

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