Eli Lilly just placed a $40 million bet on the next injectable boom
· Fortune
Eli Lilly just wrote a $40 million check to cure baldness.
The pharma giant behind Zepbound and Mounjaro—which made the injectable culturally normal for millions of Americans—led a $100 million stock offering in Absci, a generative AI drug company. Adage, BVF Partners, Columbia Threadneedle, Invus and Redmile also participated. Absci used AI to design ABS-201, an injectable antibody targeting the prolactin receptor (a hormone receptor connected to both hair growth and reproductive health). The injectable is meant to treat both androgenetic alopecia (commonly known as male or female pattern baldness) and endometriosis. No approved existing injectable antibody treats either one.
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Last week, Lilly’s deal with Absci closed the same day Absci released positive Phase 1 safety data on ABS-201. Absci CEO Sean McClain told me the $40 million buys Lilly “tickets to the game.” In short, proximity. They share a DTC ambition—Lilly has LillyDirect, and Absci wants to sell biologics almost like a consumer brand. McClain floated the idea of eventually fusing his drug with a GLP-1 compound: one shot for hair regrowth and weight loss. “You could see in the future where you’ve combined those products,” he told me. “Total vitality at an affordable price.”
That’s the market this deal is actually pointing at. GLP-1s have made injecting yourself unremarkable.
The broader injectable market is a $650 billion opportunity in 2026. GLP-1s alone are projected to hit $190–$200 billion by 2030. But oral GLP-1 versions from Lilly and Novo Nordisk are already on shelves, and the convenience argument for shots is getting harder to make—unless the biology demands it. Absci’s CMO Ransi Somaratne’s case for why ABS-201 stays injectable: proteins get destroyed in the stomach, and a pill version would reach the brain in ways a shot doesn’t.
McClain’s bigger argument is about where value actually lives in AI drug discovery—as AI tools become cheaper and more widely available, pharma companies will pay less and less to license them, meaning the only real leverage is owning the drug itself.
Absci’s thesis is to use AI-designed drugs plus clinical trials run in China at a fraction of U.S. cost to compress the path from target to Phase 2 proof-of-concept from $150 million to $15–$20 million. “AI, China, and DTC,” he said. “That is going to change the game in healthcare.”
The money flooding into this space tells its own story. Isomorphic Labs—Alphabet’s AI drug design spinout—raised a $2.1 billion Series B in May. Earendil Labs, a U.S.-China AI biologics startup backed by Sanofi and Pfizer, pulled in $787 million in March. And Xaira Therapeutics launched with $1 billion before it had a single drug in the clinic. Against that backdrop, Absci (the only publicly traded company in the group) has raised over $530 million total and is already in Phase 1.
Whether ABS-201 becomes the first AI-designed antibody to prove it truly works in people is still unknown. But Lilly putting its name (and $40 million) on the cap table means the race just got a very powerful backer.
See you tomorrow,
Lily Mae Lazarus
X: @LilyMaeLazarus
Email: [email protected]
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com