The US-head­quar­tered, Chi­na-root­ed biotech Earendil Labs said it has raised $787 mil­lion in pri­vate mon­ey, a whop­ping sum to fund an AI plat­form that has al­ready pro­duced a pipeline of over 40 drug pro­grams.

De­spite all of the hype and at­ten­tion around AI in biotech, Earendil has stayed more un­der the radar. One of the lead in­vestors in the com­pa­ny, Di­men­sion Cap­i­tal's Zavain Dar, on Fri­day called it "the DeepSeek of biotech," ref­er­enc­ing the tiny Chi­nese start­up that stunned AI gi­ants at the start of 2025 by build­ing com­pet­i­tive mod­els with a frac­tion of the com­pute and re­sources.

Earendil, found­ed in late 2024, sits at the con­ver­gence of two mega­trends that are up­end­ing bio­phar­ma: the rise of AI tech­nolo­gies for dis­cov­er­ing and de­sign­ing drugs, and the growth of Chi­na's biotech ecosys­tem.

The as­sets man­aged by No­vo Hold­ings, the con­trol­ling share­hold­er of No­vo Nordisk, fell by some 35% last year. But that doesn’t mean it will rein in its biotech in­vest­ments in the year to come.

“See­ing your as­set val­ue drop by a third, or what­ev­er it is, is head­line-grab­bing,” No­vo Hold­ings CEO Kasim Ku­tay told End­points News in an in­ter­view. “Of course it is a num­ber to look at, but … it's not what I lose sleep over.”

Ku­tay's com­pa­ny ben­e­fit­ed enor­mous­ly over the past five years or so as No­vo Nordisk's val­ue swelled on its block­buster GLP-1-based ther­a­pies for di­a­betes and obe­si­ty. Even with the Dan­ish drug­mak­er's down­turn since 2024 on in­creased com­pe­ti­tion, div­i­dends and share-buy­back pro­ceeds con­tin­ue to flow to No­vo Hold­ings — all to the ben­e­fit of the char­i­ta­ble No­vo Nordisk Foun­da­tion that is its ul­ti­mate own­er.

The UK’s drug watch­dog is re­con­sid­er­ing two Alzheimer's dis­ease med­i­cines af­ter re­ject­ing them for be­ing too ex­pen­sive.

The Na­tion­al In­sti­tute for Health and Care Ex­cel­lence last year de­ter­mined that Eli Lil­ly’s do­nanemab, mar­ket­ed as Kisun­la, and Bio­gen and Ei­sai’s lecanemab, known as Leqem­bi, were five to six times too cost­ly to be rec­om­mend­ed for the Na­tion­al Health Ser­vice.

But since then, NICE has raised its cost-ef­fec­tive­ness thresh­old by 25% in re­sponse to a drug pric­ing deal with the US — enough to equate to around three to five new drugs or la­bel ex­pan­sions be­ing rec­om­mend­ed an­nu­al­ly. Do­nanemab and lecanemab could be the first drugs to win rec­om­men­da­tions un­der the new pric­ing scheme, which now has an up­per lim­it of £35,000 ($46,800), a NICE spokesper­son told End­points News.