NC life sciences companies embrace AI across multiple functions

The artificial intelligence revolution has come to North Carolina’s life sciences sector in a big way, as companies from the smallest startups to global drug manufacturers deploy AI across almost all functions.

Not long ago, AI was seen as a supplement, a way to help biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies improve efficiency or assist with research. Now AI is taking a starring role in research, drug discovery, clinical studies, regulatory processes, manufacturing and more.

“AI is being integrated across all life sciences sectors in the state, from early-stage to bigger, more established companies,” said Mike Carnes, vice president of emerging company development at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. “We are seeing the impact of AI on drug development where it is creating efficiencies, time savings, and reducing costs. Many startups are AI-native, with the success of their business models linked to this technology.”

Tracking AI’s advance across North Carolina is an inexact science. By one measure – National Institutes of Health grants for AI or machine learning – $69.5 million was awarded to North Carolina recipients in 2024, up from $42.4 million in 2020. The state ranked sixth in the nation for such NIH grants for the five-year period from 2020 through 2024.

By another count, 78 of the 860 life sciences companies in NCBiotech’s company directory include AI or machine learning in their descriptions. The number is significant because these companies describe themselves as being AI- or ML-driven, not simply including AI in some of their processes.

A new wave of AI-driven startups

One such company founded on an AI backbone is Durham early-stage startup FlashPath. Sara Selitsky founded the company in 2025 to give drug and chemical developers better information on drug toxicity. FlashPath does this by using AI to analyze large amounts of toxicology data generated across millions of studies worldwide.

It’s an example of how the power of AI is helping solve an ongoing and expensive challenge, in this case, clinical trial failures because of drug-associated toxicities.

“The question is, can we predict toxicity before it happens?” Selitsky said during an AI symposium held at NCBiotech in November. “The key is really just aggregating together as much data as possible. We harmonize the data, then put that into a relational database, which becomes a knowledge graph. This model will have a lot of utility, but one of the major ones is to be able to predict safety.”

Chapel Hill-based iOrganBio is another early-stage company made possible largely by AI. The company, founded in 2024, emerged from stealth in October 2025 with $2 million in seed funding. Its technology uses AI-driven prediction models to reliably and reproducibly program different human cell types, which has applications in drug discovery, biomanufacturing, and regenerative medicine.

“We’re building an AI-made company built on reinforcement learning and based on one very narrow computational primitive around, ‘How do I change the state of my cells to reach a particular objective?’” co-founder and CEO Daniel Delubac said at the NCBiotech symposium.

AI-powered drug discovery and development

As life sciences companies advance therapies into commercialization, AI can play an especially important role in increasing efficiency, speed and knowledge, according to a 2025 report from IQVIA, a clinical research and healthcare intelligence company based in Durham.

“Leaders are moving beyond isolated pilots and fragmented tools to embed AI into the fabric of their commercial models,” the report said.

Life sciences startups founded before AI entered mainstream consciousness are now adopting the technology to expedite drug development and commercialization strategies.

Locus Biosciences, a precision medicine company in Morrisville that spun out of North Carolina State University in 2015, integrates AI, automation and synthetic biology into its drug development platform.

Locus, which is also an NCBiotech portfolio company, announced in January it had received $3.3 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the first tranche of a contract that could total up to $28 million if all milestones are met. The NIH contract is intended to support a proof-of-concept clinical trial for the company’s AI-designed bacteriophage therapeutic for hospital-acquired pneumonia and ventilator-associated pneumonia.

“This collaboration underscores the power of Locus’s AI-enabled drug development platform and its advanced U.S.-based manufacturing to accelerate a new generation of engineered bacteriophage therapeutics,” CEO Paul Garofolo said in a statement.

Another Triangle company and Duke University spinout, Ten63 Therapeutics, got its start in 2019 using AI combined with quantum-level simulations to rapidly explore trillions of possible drug molecules, enabling the design of new therapeutics for previously undruggable targets. Ten63’s approach has garnered the attention of investors, as evidenced by an oversubscribed $15.9 million Series A financing in 2023 and new investments this year from Chugai Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation, bring total funding to more than $45 million.

Applications in medtech, agtech, biomanufacturing

Some medtech startups are using AI, as well. Restor3d, another Duke spinout, combines AI-driven design software, vertically integrated manufacturing and rapid surgical planning to create personalized orthopedic implants. The Durham company last year announced a $104 million round of financing.

Startups in the agtech are leveraging AI to solve a variety of challenges. One example is Raleigh-based AGEYE, an AI-driven agriculture automation and farm software company working to improve data, software and automation in farming.

And North Carolina’s thriving biomanufacturing sector increasingly depends on AI-driven processes and technologies to improve operations.

When AbbVie announced in April it would build a $1.4 billion advanced manufacturing facility in Durham, the pharmaceutical company said the new campus would integrate AI into its manufacturing and laboratory technology for production of its immunology, neuroscience and oncology medicines.

Genentech, which is building a 700,000-square-foot manufacturing center in Holly Springs, believes AI can improve and speed decision-making while keeping humans fully involved.

Joash Mudalige, Genentech’s vice president and Holly Springs site head, said at a recent panel discussion at NCBiotech that until recently, troubleshooting problems on a production line required managers and technicians with decades of experience. AI-powered decision support systems trained on past incidences can effectively encode what veteran technicians have learned over decades, providing less experienced operators with recommended fixes.

“I think where AI can come in is to bring the five-year experience of the manager and the three-year experience of the engineer and give them the right tools so they can make an intelligent decision at three o’clock in the morning,” he said.

AI’s role across North Carolina’s biotech and pharmaceutical sectors is likely to keep growing as both early-stage and established companies find new ways to use the technology. In the years ahead, AI is poised to help reshape how therapies are discovered, developed and manufactured for patients in North Carolina and around the world.