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Pfizer $PFE +0.70% has licensed the AI drug discovery platform of startup Chai Discovery, giving the pharmaceutical company access to generative AI models designed to accelerate how it identifies and designs new molecules.
Through the deal, Pfizer gains access to two tools: Chai-3, a model the startup had not previously disclosed publicly, and a bespoke model trained on Pfizer's own data and configured to fit its discovery processes, the company said.
The announcement says the new model is a major improvement, reducing the failure rate in antibody design by half compared to the last version, while still producing candidates that meet therapeutic standards. It also improves binding in therapeutic settings, helps engineer multi-specific molecules, and works better against targets that traditional drug discovery methods have found difficult.
Its immediate predecessor, Chai-2, debuted in 2025 and broke new ground as the earliest zero-shot platform to hit double-digit experimental success rates — an achievement the company describes as roughly 100 times better than what earlier computational tools could deliver — shrinking timelines that once stretched across months into a matter of weeks.
