Sanofi Partners with Chinese AI Firm BioMap for Drug Discovery

Sanofi has formed a strategic partnership with Chinese AI firm BioMap to expedite drug discovery for biotherapeutics, a collaboration potentially valued over $1 billion. This alliance will blend BioMap's AI foundation model with Sanofi's expertise to craft advanced AI tools tailored for biotherapeutic drug development. BioMap's approach, which relies on vast unlabelled data, facilitates superior predictions even with limited data across domains like oncology and neurology. The terms stipulate an initial $10 million payment to BioMap, with potential payouts surpassing $1 billion based on various developmental and regulatory milestones.

Can an AI model be built with unlabelled data?

Yes, an AI model can be built with unlabelled data. In fact, BioMap's approach mentioned in the article relies on vast unlabelled data to make predictions in domains like oncology and neurology. Unlabelled data refers to data that has not been categorized or annotated with specific labels or tags. AI models can be trained on unlabelled data using techniques such as unsupervised learning, where the model learns patterns and structures in the data without explicit labels.