Hummingbird Ventures’ Post

Decoding Bio’s AI x Bio Summit 2024 is a wrap! 300 attendees, 3 panels, 1 fireside chat, 13 roundtables later, we couldn’t be more energized about what is coming in the new generation of life science companies. The Summit's mission is to foster meaningful conversations within the ecosystem, moving beyond the polarized debates. The field is marred with easy, extreme positions: “AI companies don’t understand biology” or “AI is a paradigm shift and is revolutionizing drug discovery”. The truth is that whilst these are extreme examples, they’re not bold or contrarian opinions; they’re the easy way out of a real conversation. It is clear that the answer is nuanced, and the Summit’s speakers and attendees demonstrated this. Our hope is that, in the future, an AI x Bio Summit will no longer be necessary: that pharma executives, industry scientists, academia, startup founders and execs, late-stage and public equity investors and the venture ecosystem can seamlessly discuss how AI can better serve patients and the planet. To paraphrase Amit Etkin from Alto Neuroscience: "Hopefully, in the future, we won't need AI conferences, but simply conferences where we discuss patient outcomes." The AI in Pharma panel with Greg Meyers (Bristol Myers Squibb), Cynthia Hong, (Novartis), Shameer Khader, (Sanofi) and Guang Yang, (McKinsey & Company) showcased how AI has permeated various departments due to its real utility. It demonstrated that pharmaceutical companies are not the innovation-averse incumbents as often perceived and have a defined vision for what they want to build, buy, or partner with. The Foundation Models in Biology panel with Tom Sercu (EvolutionaryScale), Philipp Lorenz (Basecamp Research), Matej Macak (QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey), Ali Madani (Profluent) and Renee Y. (NVIDIA) discussed how new models are enabling us to design, rather than discover new biology. The Building a Biotech in 2024 panel with Sajith Wickramasekara (Benchling), Michael Nally (Generate:Biomedicines) and Bigyan Bista (Enveda Biosciences) showed us that it is critical to their businesses, but it won't replace wet lab experimentation anytime soon. I wanted to thank the incredible co-hosts Amee Kapadia (Cantos) and Eric J. Dimise, & Johanna (Rodriguez) Grossman, (NYSE), our sponsors who made it possible (Amazon Web Services (AWS), Bunsen, HSBC, McKinsey & Company and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP), all the speakers and roundtable leads who generously offered their time and wisdom, as well as all the attendees that came for the day. Until next year!