Benchling Deepens AI Footprint With Lilly TuneLab Partnership to Deliver Enterprise-Grade Drug Discovery Models

New updates have been reported about Benchling.

Benchling has entered a strategic collaboration with Eli Lilly’s AI/ML platform, TuneLab, positioning its R&D software as a key distribution and data orchestration layer for pharma‑grade AI in biotech. Under the deal, Benchling’s more than 1,300 biotech customers will be able to access Lilly TuneLab prediction models for antibodies and small molecules directly within their existing Benchling workflows, tapping into models trained on decades of Lilly’s proprietary research data representing over $1 billion in R&D investment. Scientists can run predictions and then share selected outputs back into TuneLab in a controlled, federated-learning framework, allowing Lilly’s models to continuously improve without exposing underlying proprietary datasets. Benchling’s CEO Sajith Wickramasekara said Lilly chose Benchling as a priority platform partner because it is already embedded where scientists do their day-to-day work, reinforcing Benchling’s role as an industry infrastructure provider for AI-enabled R&D.

This integration strengthens Benchling’s competitive position as the central platform where life science organizations connect structured experimental data with advanced AI models, complementing its existing partnerships with Anthropic, NVIDIA, and others. The collaboration also addresses a key market bottleneck highlighted in Benchling’s 2026 Biotech AI Report: while 81% of AI early adopters in biotech have deployed scientific models, most lack the high-quality data, security, and compliance capabilities required to scale, and fewer than 25% of AI-forward emerging biotechs participate in data-sharing consortia. By giving companies of all sizes access to AI models built on Lilly’s comprehensive drug disposition, safety, and preclinical datasets—covering experimental data from hundreds of thousands of molecules—Benchling effectively lowers both the data and infrastructure barriers to industrial-grade AI. The program is expected to go live later this year on an opt-in basis for Benchling customers, with potential implications for higher platform stickiness, expanded AI-driven workflows, and increased Benchling relevance to both emerging biotechs and large pharma seeking secure, integrated AI capabilities in drug discovery and development.