Sanofi is significantly increasing its artificial intelligence capabilities. The French pharmaceutical company will invest $294 million to expand its global AI center of excellence in Toronto, beginning to scale the digital infrastructure it built at its Canadian site four years ago.
The expansion is supported by a conditional grant of up to $5 million from the Invest Ontario Fund and is expected to create 50 highly skilled jobs in AI, machine learning and data science by 2028, according to a May 4 release.
This builds on a foundation of more than 150 roles already established in the field, across specialist areas such as cloud computing, data engineering, software development, bioinformatics and pharmaceutical data science. The new employees will help design and deploy AI tools across Sanofi’s organization in drug discovery, manufacturing and commercial operations.
“AI is embedded in the way we discover, develop, produce, launch and support innovative treatments at Sanofi,” Emmanuel Frenehardt, Sanofi’s chief digital officer, said in a statement. “Our Toronto AI COE exemplifies how we are leveraging artificial intelligence to accelerate our mission to halve the time from discovery to delivery of innovative treatments. Our investment in Canada is building the foundation for the next generation of breakthrough medicines and vaccines.”
Dimitrije Jankovic, Sanofi’s global head of digital strategy and operations, said in a release that Sanofi is expanding its Toronto AI site thanks to “local biopharma expertise and world-class AI talent tools,” as well as a partnership with the province of Ontario.
Sanofi’s move is the latest in a series of major investments by major pharmaceutical companies as the industry rushes to integrate AI into every aspect of its operations.
Just last month, Merck & Co. entered into a $1 billion partnership with Google Cloud to establish an agent AI ecosystem across the New Jersey pharmaceutical company’s research and development, manufacturing, commercial, and corporate functions.
Obesity and diabetes leaders Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are also partnering with AI technology giants. Last month, Novo announced a partnership with OpenAI to integrate AI into the Danish company’s “day-to-day operations,” according to Novo CEO Mike Doustdar.
Earlier this year, Lilly debuted a supercomputer built in collaboration with Nvidia. The Indianapolis drugmaker is also establishing an AI co-innovation lab in the Bay Area. Lilly has also signed multiple AI drug discovery partnerships, including an agreement with Profluent Bio targeting kilobase-scale DNA editing in genetic medicines and a potential $2.75 billion deal with Insilico Medicine focused on oral therapies.
Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche recently announced a major digital push of its own, deploying an additional 2,176 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs to build what it calls the industry’s largest AI factory.
Sanofi’s latest investment in its Toronto hub comes about six months after it partnered with Canadian software company BenchSci. The company offers an AI copilot called ASCEND that combines public scientific information with proprietary internal data to generate a knowledge graph that scientists can use to better understand disease biology.
In addition to its own AI drug discovery agreement, Sanofi used AI to create “digital twins,” or virtual patients, to help evaluate the safety and efficacy of drug candidates. Data from digital twins helped Sanofi win FDA pediatric labeling for Xenpozyme, an enzyme replacement therapy.
Sanofi may integrate deeper with AI under new leadership. Belén Garijo officially took over the Sanofi CEO role last week, taking over from his previous role as CEO of Merck KGaA, a leading electronics business that supplies materials and solutions to the AI and other technology industries.
