Owkin and Sanofi (SNY) are taking their AI partnership to the next level. On Friday, the companies announced a new multi-year collaboration to develop what they're calling "next-generation AI-powered biopharma agents" — essentially, AI systems designed to assist with drug discovery and development.

The agreement also includes a five-year license for Owkin's AI Scientist platform, K Pro. This is the latest chapter in a relationship that started back in 2021, when the two first teamed up through a €90 million strategic partnership focused on oncology target identification and patient subgroup analysis. That collaboration later expanded to support drug positioning within Sanofi's immunology pipeline.

Now, they're going deeper. Under the new deal, Owkin will lead the end-to-end development of AI-driven biopharma agents built specifically for Sanofi. These agents will be deployed through K Pro, which combines multimodal patient data with specialized biological AI systems to support activities across early-stage discovery through clinical development.

Owkin says the development of K Pro aligns with its broader goal of achieving what it calls "Biological Artificial Superintelligence" — a technology that could help the pharmaceutical industry tackle and potentially automate some of its most complex R&D challenges. For Sanofi, the aim is faster and more confident decision-making in drug development.

This isn't happening in a vacuum. The pharmaceutical industry has been increasingly turning to AI to speed up drug discovery. In May, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) announced a strategic agreement with Anthropic to deploy AI across its operations, aiming to connect over 30,000 employees with critical institutional knowledge. And in April, Gilead Sciences (GILD) deepened its oncology strategy through expanded partnerships with Tempus AI (TEM).

As for Sanofi's stock, shares were up 1.33% at $44.97 during premarket trading on Friday.