Schrödinger and Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) are expanding a long-running collaboration to bring more artificial intelligence into how BMS discovers new drugs.
Announced August 6, 2026, the expanded deal gives BMS access to two of Schrödinger’s newer tools: Bunsen, an “agentic” AI co-scientist that helps run molecular-discovery workflows, and RetroSynth, an AI system that plans and rapidly evaluates chemical-synthesis routes. These sit alongside Schrödinger’s established physics-based simulation, which models how candidate molecules behave. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Why it matters
Schrödinger has built its business on computational chemistry, and pairing that physics-based modeling with generative AI is a widely watched approach to designing better drug molecules faster and flagging which ones are actually feasible to make. “BMS is a long-standing customer and collaborator,” said Schrödinger chief scientific officer Robert Abel. BMS’s Stephen Johnson said Bunsen “allows our scientists to think differently about how physics-based tools can be used to navigate molecular design space.” The deal is one more sign that big pharma is embedding AI deeper into the earliest, most uncertain stage of drug development.