Recursion Acquires Exscientia in $688M AI-Driven Drug Development Deal

Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company that leverages AI to find novel medication candidates, has reached a $688 million all-stock agreement to acquire smaller competitor Exscientia. The agreement is made at a time when big pharmaceutical companies are concentrating on AI to discover patients for clinical trials more swiftly, create drugs more quickly, and test medications with fewer subjects. The most costly and time-consuming aspect of drug development is conducting human research; it can cost over a billion dollars to successfully produce a newly found medication.

Recursion is a phase 2 clinical-stage company that was created in 2013 and offers a pipeline of medicines for certain tumours and uncommon disorders. In 2021, the firm became public and has since formed alliances with major pharmaceutical corporations such as Roche AG and Bayer. Exscientia is a UK-based company that runs an AI-driven drug development platform and is working on a cancer and immunology therapy pipeline. Recursion's drug development pipeline would be strengthened by the acquisition of Exscientia, and it would have access to alliances with major pharmaceutical companies like Sanofi and Merck KGaA.

Exscientia shareholders will get 0.7729 Recursion shares for each Exscientia share they own as a part of the agreement. Early in 2025, the acquisition is anticipated to finalise, giving the merged corporation over $850 million.