San Francisco-based Chai Discovery announced a collaboration with Novartis under which the Swiss pharmaceutical company will gain access to Chai’s generative AI platform — including the Chai-3 model — to support therapeutic antibody discovery across multiple undisclosed targets and programs. The agreement follows more than a year of technical engagement between the companies, including Novartis’s early access to Chai’s next-generation structure prediction model in spring 2025, and marks Novartis’s first formal commercial agreement with Chai. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The Chai-3 model is a generative AI system built to predict and reprogram molecular interactions, generate novel biomolecule designs de novo, and produce antibody candidates with defined binding and therapeutic properties. Unlike traditional antibody discovery methods such as phage display or hybridoma screening, the platform operates from defined molecular criteria rather than experimental library selection, enabling computational proposal of candidates before wet-lab validation. Chai-3 reported a doubling in antibody design success rate relative to its predecessor, Chai-2, the first zero-shot antibody design platform to achieve double-digit experimental hit rates, with discovery cycles compressed from months to weeks. Under the collaboration, Novartis will deploy Chai’s models across multiple therapeutic programs, with the platform functioning as a horizontal discovery engine rather than supporting a single asset.
No upfront payment, milestones, royalties, or territorial terms were disclosed. Novartis is described as a customer in the arrangement, consistent with a platform access or technology licensing structure rather than a traditional drug asset deal with milestone-linked economics.