AstraZeneca expands $37.5m partnership with Israeli-founded biotech firm

Israeli-founded AI biotech company Immunai is expanding its partnership with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca in a deal worth up to $37.5 million, marking another major win for Israel’s growing artificial intelligence and life sciences sector.

The New York-based company, founded by Israeli entrepreneur and scientist Noam Solomon, announced that AstraZeneca will broaden its use of Immunai’s AI platform across oncology clinical development programs through 2027.

Under the expanded agreement, AstraZeneca will continue using Immunai’s AMICA-OS artificial intelligence operating system, which combines single-cell immune system data with advanced AI models designed to improve cancer drug development. The platform is used to help identify biomarkers, analyze why treatments succeed or fail, optimize dosing and improve patient selection in clinical trials.

The collaboration highlights the increasing role Israeli-founded AI companies are playing in global pharmaceutical research, particularly as major drugmakers race to integrate artificial intelligence into clinical development.

“AstraZeneca does not keep expanding a collaboration unless real value is delivered,” Immunai CEO Noam Solomon wrote in a LinkedIn post following the announcement.

“Clinical teams in multiple pharma companies are using Immunai’s platform to figure out which patients to enrol, why a drug worked or didn’t, and how to get dosing right before it becomes a costly late-stage mistake,” Solomon wrote. “That is the bar. Not an abstract AI promise. Real work in real programs.”

AstraZeneca executives said the partnership reflects the company’s long-term commitment to AI-driven drug development.

“Across AstraZeneca, we are continuously investing in frontier AI models and solutions to inform clinical development decisions and derive novel mechanistically informed biomarkers,” said Jorge Reis-Filho, AstraZeneca’s chief of AI for science innovation. “The expansion of this ongoing collaboration is a reflection of our conviction in the transformative potential of AI to improve patient outcomes.”

Immunai was founded by Israeli scientists and entrepreneurs and maintains strong Israeli ties alongside its New York headquarters. The company has become one of the most prominent players in the emerging AI-biotech field, raising close to $270 million and employing more than 170 scientists, engineers and computational biologists.

The expanded oncology deal follows previous agreements between the companies, including a 2024 oncology collaboration and a 2025 expansion into inflammatory bowel disease research.

Israel has increasingly positioned itself as a global hub for AI-driven healthcare innovation, with startups combining machine learning, computational biology and medical research attracting growing attention from multinational pharmaceutical companies and investors.

For AstraZeneca, the agreement deepens its investment in AI tools aimed at improving efficiency in oncology clinical trials, one of the most expensive and competitive areas of drug development.

Solomon also praised AstraZeneca executives and researchers involved in the partnership, including Susan Galbraith and several senior oncology and AI leaders, calling the collaboration evidence that Immunai’s technology is delivering measurable value in real-world drug programs.