Eli Lilly, the company that made weight-loss injectables a cultural phenomenon with Zepbound and Mounjaro, is now betting $40 million that AI can design a shot to cure baldness.
The pharma heavyweight led a $100 million stock offering in Absci Corporation, a generative AI drug company headquartered in Vancouver, Washington. Lilly purchased shares at $7.41 each, with Adage, BVF Partners, Columbia Threadneedle, Invus, and Redmile also participating in the round. The market’s reaction was swift: ABSI shares surged approximately 36% on the news.
What Absci is actually building
The money is earmarked to advance ABS-201, a monoclonal antibody designed entirely by Absci’s AI-powered Integrated Drug Creation platform. It targets the prolactin receptor, a hormone receptor linked to both hair growth and reproductive health.
ABS-201 is the first AI-designed therapeutic from Absci to reach human trials, engineered as a first-in-class injectable antibody for two conditions that currently have zero approved injectable treatments: androgenetic alopecia (pattern baldness) and endometriosis.
