New nomination widens multi-year drug discovery work
Sanofi has added a new therapeutic target to its research alliance with Aqemia, triggering an additional milestone payment under the companies’ multi-year agreement announced on 17 July 2026.
That expanded collaboration builds on a deal first announced in December 2023. Across the covered programmes, Aqemia is eligible for up to $140 million in upfront and milestone payments.
Under the agreement, the companies work from the first search for hits through to the selection of a development candidate. Aqemia designs novel small molecules, while Sanofi leads wet lab research, development and commercialisation.
Aqemia uses Qemi, its proprietary platform that combines generative AI with quantum-inspired physics. In the partnership, Sanofi selects the targets and Aqemia designs molecules against them with Sanofi scientific teams.
Researchers now work across Paris and London for Aqemia, and across Boston, Frankfurt and Paris for Sanofi. The joint way of working is already well established across those sites.
Paris, London, Boston and Frankfurt teams
Qemi is already being used on Sanofi targets that start with limited chemical data. Those projects include difficult first-in-class programmes, where large training datasets are not available at the outset.
Unlike systems that need large volumes of experimental data, Aqemia says Qemi can generate needed data in-house through physics-based calculations from the start of each project.
As a result, Sanofi nominated a new therapeutic target and widened the scope of the collaboration. The added target also triggered the new milestone payment.
Maximilien Levesque, Aqemia’s chief executive and co-founder, said the added target shows the company’s physics-based generative AI can deliver on “real, hard projects”.
Aqemia was founded in 2019 and is based in Paris, France, and London, UK. Besides partnerships with large pharmaceutical companies, it is building its own pipeline across critical diseases.
Aqemia described the expansion as the next step in a multi-year partnership with Sanofi.
