Huawei Expands AI Pharma Partnerships Using Domestic Chips Despite Lagging Behind Nvidia

Huawei plans for more AI pharma tie-ups, says healthcare president

SHANGHAI, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Chinese technology conglomerate Huawei plans to expand its AI cooperation with local pharmaceutical firms into drug development and clinical practice, a senior executive said. The move highlights Huawei's ambitions to gain a foothold in the fast-growing AI drug discovery market, where pharmaceutical companies are investing in modelling tools and automated laboratories to shorten development timelines and improve efficiency. "As we further deepen our research into AI in the medical field, ⁠we'll have more collaboration and results emerging with pharmaceutical companies from drug manufacturing to clinical to final implementation," William Zhang, president of Huawei's healthcare business unit, told Reuters on Wednesday. He said that Huawei had some existing collaborations in the area of clinical practice in hospitals and was exploring more opportunities, without further elaboration. The projects now are mainly with domestic drugmakers, he said. U.S. chip giant Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab has struck AI-related partnerships with drugmakers ⁠such as Eli Lilly (LLY.N), opens new tab and Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO), opens new tab, as technology companies seek to capitalise on growing demand for AI-powered drug research. Huawei offers tools, opens new tab for screening potentially viable drug compounds, alongside its Ascend and Kunpeng chips. In May, Huawei ⁠said one project involving state-owned Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings was the industry's first production validation of independently developed AI drug research models that were adapted ⁠to its Ascend and Kunpeng technologies. Industry forecasts suggest that the use of machine learning to optimize target discovery, design molecules ⁠and streamline clinical trial planning could halve early-stage development timelines and costs within the next three to five years, Reuters has previously reported. Reporting by Andrew Silver in Shanghai; Editing by Saad Sayeed Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Huawei plans more AI pharma partnerships, mainly with Chinese drugmakers

William Zhang says the projects are mainly with domestic drugmakers, while Nvidia is signing billion-dollar labs with Lilly and Novo Nordisk. Huawei intends to sign more AI partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, according to William Zhang, president of its healthcare business unit, who told Reuters the projects currently run mainly with domestic Chinese drugmakers. The company sells compound screening tools alongside its Ascend and Kunpeng chips, the same domestic stack it has been building out since US sanctions forced it to find workarounds. "As we further deepen our research into AI in the medical field, we'll have more collaboration and results emerging with pharmaceutical companies from drug manufacturing to clinical to final implementation," Zhang said. He also described existing collaborations in clinical practice in hospitals without elaborating on which ones. There is no target number attached to any of this, and no prospective partner was named. It is a statement of direction rather than an announcement, which is worth establishing before the figures that will inevitably get attached to it start circulating. The one project Huawei has pointed to is a deal announced in May involving Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings, the state-owned group. Huawei described it as the industry's first production validation of independently developed AI drug research models adapted to Ascend and Kunpeng. That phrase deserves unpacking, because it is likely to be misread. "Independently developed" here translates a Chinese term meaning domestically developed rather than built by Huawei, and the models in question belong to StoneWise, a Beijing AI drug design company that was the third party to the agreement. Huawei's contribution was the silicon and the work of porting somebody else's software onto it. That is a meaningful thing to have done, given the whole point is running a drug discovery pipeline without American chips, but it is infrastructure rather than science. The company does have a model of its own, and it is not new. The Pangu drug molecule model was released in 2021, developed with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and trained on 1.7 billion existing compounds to predict how molecules bind to targets. Huawei also has an older tie-up with Yunnan Baiyao dating to 2022, under which the drugmaker supplies botanical compound libraries, and Huawei supplies the cloud and the AI. Neither that nor the Guangyao work has produced a named drug candidate that has entered trials. The scale gap with the competition is the part that puts the announcement in perspective. Nvidia has struck AI partnerships with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, and the Lilly arrangement alone is a co-innovation lab with up to $1bn committed jointly over five years. Set against that, Huawei's disclosed pharma work is one three-party ecosystem agreement at proof-of-concept stage plus a four-year-old cooperation deal. The asymmetry is not hidden, and Zhang did not attempt to hide it. What Huawei has instead is a policy tailwind. Biopharmaceuticals were named an emerging pillar industry in this year's government work report, AI in pharmaceuticals is written into the fifteenth five-year plan, and a state-backed body inaugurated in June lists Huawei on the supply side alongside Kingdee and XtalPi. The domestic focus Zhang described also has an obvious constraint behind it. US export guidance issued last year told the world that using Huawei's Ascend accelerators anywhere is likely to breach American controls, which limits the addressable market for a pitch built on that hardware, much as it has for Huawei's data centre bids abroad. The wider field is less encouraging than the announcements suggest. Roughly $60bn has gone into AI drug discovery globally, and no AI-discovered drug has yet been approved anywhere, though 179 candidates were in pipelines by June against four in 2017, and nine have reached Phase III. Reuters noted that industry forecasts suggest machine learning could halve early-stage development timelines and costs within three to five years. That is a projection about the field rather than a claim about Huawei, and the distinction matters given how much of this sector is currently being sold on the strength of the former, as China's push to run serious AI workloads on domestic silicon keeps demonstrating.

Huawei plans for more AI pharma tie-ups, says healthcare president

The move highlights Huawei's ambitions to gain a foothold in the fast-growing AI drug discovery market, where pharmaceutical companies are ⁠investing in ⁠modelling tools and automated laboratories to shorten development timelines and improve efficiency. Chinese technology conglomerate Huawei plans to expand its AI cooperation with local pharmaceutical firms into drug development and clinical practice, a senior executive said. The move highlights Huawei's ambitions to gain a foothold in the fast-growing AI drug discovery market, where pharmaceutical companies are ⁠investing in ⁠modelling tools and automated laboratories to shorten development timelines and improve efficiency. "As we further deepen our research into AI in the medical field, we'll have more collaboration and results emerging with pharmaceutical companies from drug manufacturing to clinical to final implementation," William Zhang, president of Huawei's healthcare business ⁠unit, told Reuters on Wednesday. He said that Huawei had some existing collaborations in the area of clinical practice in ⁠hospitals and was exploring more opportunities, without further elaboration. The projects now are mainly with domestic drugmakers, he said. US chip giant Nvidia has struck AI-related partnerships with drugmakers such as Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, as technology companies seek to capitalise on growing demand for AI-powered drug research. Huawei offers tools for screening potentially viable drug compounds, alongside its Ascend and Kunpeng chips. In May, Huawei said one project involving state-owned Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings was the ⁠industry's first production validation of independently developed AI drug research models that were adapted to its Ascend and Kunpeng technologies. Industry forecasts suggest that the use of machine learning to optimize target discovery, design molecules and streamline clinical trial planning could halve early-stage development timelines and costs within the next three to five years, Reuters has previously reported.