Recursion Pharmaceuticals
Recursion Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage TechBio company that uses AI and over 50 petabytes of proprietary biological data to industrialize drug discovery, partnering with major pharmaceutical firms on multi-program collaborations and advancing five wholly-owned clinical programs in oncology and rare disease.
- Company typePublic
- Founded2013
- HeadquartersSalt Lake City, United States
- Headcount501–1,000
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Recursion Pharmaceuticals does
Recursion Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage TechBio company that applies artificial intelligence and a large proprietary multimodal dataset to industrialize drug discovery and development. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Salt Lake City, the company operates Recursion OS, an end-to-end platform that integrates automated wet-lab experimentation with purpose-built AI foundation models spanning target identification, generative chemistry design, and clinical trial optimization. The platform is backed by more than 50 petabytes of proprietary biological and chemical data, automated laboratories processing up to 2.2 million samples per week, and BioHive-2, a supercomputer built with NVIDIA containing 504 H100 GPUs. Recursion has released multiple foundation models (Phenom-Beta, OpenPhenom-S/16, TxPert, TxFM, Boltz-2, MolE) and an LLM-orchestrated workflow engine called LOWE.
The company's commercial model is partnership-driven B2B enterprise sales targeting large pharmaceutical companies. Recursion generates revenue through multi-year collaboration agreements with upfront fees, research and development milestones, and tiered royalties on net sales, with named partners including Roche/Genentech (up to 40 programs, $150M upfront), Sanofi (up to 15 targets, $100M upfront, up to $5.2B potential milestones), Bayer (up to 7 oncology programs, $80M upfront, up to $1.5B potential payments), and Merck KGaA ($20M upfront, up to $674M in milestones). A wholly-owned pipeline of five clinical-stage programs (REC-4881, REC-617, REC-1245, REC-3565, REC-4539) and approximately 15 discovery programs provides optionality for direct commercialization. FY 2025 revenue was $74.7M, up 26.9% YoY, against a net loss of ~$644.8M; the company held $665.2M in cash at Q1 2026, providing runway into early 2028.
Recursion Pharmaceuticals firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Recursion Pharmaceuticals
- Legal name
- Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
- Website
- https://recursion.com
- Company type
- Public
- Founded year
- 2013
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 501–1,000 employees
- Short description
- Recursion Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage TechBio company that uses AI and over 50 petabytes of proprietary biological data to industrialize drug discovery, partnering with major pharmaceutical firms on multi-program collaborations and advancing five wholly-owned clinical programs in oncology and rare disease.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Recursion Pharmaceuticals industry classification
Industry- Product category
- AI Drug Discovery Platform
- NAICS
- Research and Development in Biotechnology (except Nanobiotechnology) (541714), Scientific Research and Development Services (5417)
- SIC
- Pharmaceutical Preparations (2834), In Vitro & In Vivo Diagnostic Substances (2835)
- akta.pro primary industry
- AI/ML Platforms for Drug Discovery & Experiment Optimization (HLAGAJAO)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Drug Discovery (Target ID/Validation & Hit Discovery) (HLAIALAA), Translational Medicine & Biomarkers (HLAIALAF), Central Laboratory & Clinical Trial Testing CROs (HLAGAAAE), Clinical CROs (Phase I–IV) (HLAGAAAA)
Keywords
Where Recursion Pharmaceuticals is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Salt Lake City
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices5 records
Markets served
Recursion Pharmaceuticals business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure
Revenue model
- Partnership Revenue - Sanofi: Strategic research collaboration with Sanofi to develop AI-driven pipeline of precision-engineered small molecule medicines. Received $100M upfront, with potential for up to $5.2B in aggregate milestone payments plus tiered royalties on net sales ranging from high-single-digits to mid-teens. Partnership covers up to 15 novel targets in oncology and immunology.
- Partnership Revenue - Roche/Genentech: Multi-year strategic collaboration in neuroscience and oncology. Received $150M upfront. Each of up to 40 programs could yield more than $300M in development, commercialization and net sales milestones for Recursion, plus tiered royalties on net sales.
- Partnership Revenue - Bayer: Precision oncology collaboration covering up to seven oncology programs. Received $80M upfront and equity investment. Potential success-based payments up to $1.5B plus royalties on net sales.
- Partnership Revenue - Merck KGaA: Multi-year collaboration in oncology and immunology. Received $20M upfront with discovery, development, regulatory and sales-based milestone payments up to $674M aggregate if all milestones for three initial programs are achieved.
- Platform Licensing - BioNeMo: License of Phenom-Beta foundation model through NVIDIA's BioNeMo platform for external commercial and non-commercial use.
- Milestone Revenue: Revenue recognized from completion of research milestones under partnership agreements. Q4 2025 included $30M milestone payment from Roche for second phenomap. Fifth milestone achieved with Sanofi totaling $134M in payments to date.
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels2 records
Marketing channels7 records
Recursion Pharmaceuticals product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Recursion Pharmaceuticals develops and sells Recursion OS, an AI-native, end-to-end drug discovery and development platform that integrates automated wet-lab experimentation with proprietary AI models and foundation models. The platform spans from target identification through clinical development, generating one of the world's largest fit-for-purpose proprietary biological and chemical datasets exceeding 50 petabytes. Revenue is generated primarily through strategic partnership agreements with large pharmaceutical companies (Roche/Genentech, Sanofi, Bayer, Merck KGaA) featuring upfront payments, milestone payments, and royalties.
Product overview
Recursion Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage TechBio company offering Recursion OS, an AI-native, end-to-end drug discovery and development platform that integrates biology, chemistry, and clinical development. The platform consists of multiple interconnected components: Recursion OS serves as the core system connecting physical experimentation (wet lab) with computational analysis (in silico), supported by BioHive-2 supercomputer infrastructure. Key sub-products include LOWE (LLM-orchestrated workflow engine with natural language interface), Maps of Biology and Chemistry for target identification, MatchMaker for compound-target interaction prediction, and generative chemistry models for molecule design. Foundation models including Phenom-Beta, OpenPhenom-S/16, TxPert, TxFM, Boltz-2, and MolE power specific capabilities across imaging, transcriptomics, and molecular property prediction. The platform enables users to discover novel targets, design optimized compounds, and advance candidates through the drug development pipeline with reported efficiency gains of up to 3X faster than traditional industry averages.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Recursion OS: AI-native, end-to-end drug discovery and development platform integrating biology, chemistry, and clinical development into a unified intelligence system
- LOWE
- BioHive-2
- Altitude Lab
- Exscientia
Products and services
- Recursion OS
Quantifiable outcome
- 43-53% reduction in polyp burden in Phase 2 FAP trial with REC-4881
- +6 more outcomes
Companies that use Recursion Pharmaceuticals
Customer profileNamed customers7 records
Segments3 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Recursion Pharmaceuticals technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration4 records
AI capability11 records
Feature13 records
Recursion Pharmaceuticals partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Ten partnerships are on record, tiered core, flagship and minor.
- Google CloudcoreExpanded collaboration leveraging generative AI capabilities including Gemini models, advanced computing resources, BigQuery for improved search and access. OpenPhenom-S/16 foundation model released on Google Cloud's Vertex AI Model Garden and Hugging Face.
- HelixcoreMulti-year agreement accessing hundreds of thousands of de-identified records including Exome+ genomic data and longitudinal health records. Used to train causal AI models and design biomarker strategies across broad disease areas. >200k non-oncology clinico-genomic records accessed to date.
- Bayer PharmaceuticalscorePrecision oncology collaboration covering up to seven oncology programs. $80M upfront and equity investment. Potential success-based payments up to $1.5B plus royalties on net sales. Bayer became first external beta user of LOWE platform.
- TempuscorePreferred access to one of world's largest proprietary de-identified patient-centric oncology datasets spanning DNA, RNA, health records. >20 petabytes of data to support discovery of biomarker-enriched therapeutics through training of causal AI models.
- Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, GermanycoreMulti-year collaboration leveraging Recursion's AI-driven precision drug design capabilities with Merck KGaA's disease expertise in oncology and immunology. $20M upfront, potential up to $674M in aggregate milestones for three initial programs.
- NVIDIAcoreStrategic partnership backed by $50M investment to advance AI-enabled drug discovery. NVIDIA provides computing expertise and cloud platform to scale foundation models in biology and chemistry. Recursion's Phenom-Beta model released on NVIDIA BioNeMo platform. BioHive-2 supercomputer built with NVIDIA DGX H100 systems.
- SanofiflagshipAI-driven pipeline of precision-engineered small molecule medicines for up to 15 novel targets in oncology and immunology. $100M upfront, potential $5.2B in aggregate milestone payments plus tiered royalties (high-single-digits to mid-teens). Five programs advanced through initial milestones.
- Roche & GenentechflagshipMulti-year strategic collaboration in neuroscience and oncology. Recursion provides Recursion OS and Maps of Biology with extensive single-cell perturbation screening data from partners. Up to 40 programs possible over decade or longer. $150M upfront, each program could yield >$300M in milestones plus royalties.
- MILA (Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms)minorMulti-year collaboration for tech-enabled drug discovery announced June 2021.
- RallybiominorCo-development and co-ownership joint venture to investigate treatments for rare diseases. Selected ENPP1 as target for hypophosphatasia (HPP). Combines Rallybio's clinical knowledge with Recursion's AI platform.
Scale indicators24 records
Recent moves9 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Recursion Pharmaceuticals competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Valo Health: AI-enabled drug discovery platform company using human-centric data and computation to accelerate drug development. Comparable in offering integrated AI drug discovery capabilities to pharma partners.
- Atomwise: AI small molecule discovery company using convolutional neural networks for structure-based drug design. Direct competitor in AI-driven hit identification and lead optimization.
- XtalPi: AI-powered drug discovery company combining quantum physics, AI, and robotics for small molecule and crystal structure prediction. Comparable in offering AI-driven drug discovery to large pharma.
- Schrödinger: Computational chemistry and physics-based simulation platform serving pharma with software and collaborative drug discovery. Comparable in offering computational platforms to large pharma for molecular design.
- Insitro: AI-driven drug discovery company combining ML with high-throughput biology to discover and develop therapeutics. Direct competitor in the TechBio space with similar target ID and platform approach.
- Insilico Medicine: AI-driven drug discovery company with end-to-end platform spanning target identification through clinical development. Comparable AI-native PharmaTech business model with partnered and internal pipeline.
- BenevolentAI: AI-driven drug discovery company using knowledge graphs and ML for target identification and drug repurposing. Comparable AI-platform approach targeting pharma partnerships and internal pipeline.
- Isomorphic Labs: Alphabet-backed AI drug discovery company spun out of DeepMind. Direct competitor pursuing AI-native drug design with deep-learning foundation models for biology.
Emerging players
- AbCellera: AI-enabled antibody discovery platform partnering with pharma for therapeutic antibody development. Adjacent in applying AI/ML to biologics discovery with similar partnership-driven model.
- Iambic (formerly Entasis Therapeutics): AI-driven drug discovery company using foundation models for chemistry and physics-based simulation. Direct emerging competitor in AI-native small molecule design.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat6 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Recursion Pharmaceuticals social profiles
Digital presenceRecursion Pharmaceuticals financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Recursion Pharmaceuticals leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles19 records
Recursion Pharmaceuticals subsidiaries and ownership
Company hierarchySubsidiaries4 records
Recursion Pharmaceuticals funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds18 records
Investors38 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Recursion Pharmaceuticals M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A4 records
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Recursion Pharmaceuticals
What does Recursion Pharmaceuticals do?
Recursion Pharmaceuticals develops and sells Recursion OS, an AI-native, end-to-end drug discovery and development platform that integrates automated wet-lab experimentation with proprietary AI models and foundation models. The platform spans from target identification through clinical development, generating one of the world's largest fit-for-purpose proprietary biological and chemical datasets exceeding 50 petabytes. Revenue is generated primarily through strategic partnership agreements with large pharmaceutical companies (Roche/Genentech, Sanofi, Bayer, Merck KGaA) featuring upfront payments, milestone payments, and royalties.
Is Recursion Pharmaceuticals a public or private company?
Recursion Pharmaceuticals is a public company. It is classified as public and is currently operating.
When was Recursion Pharmaceuticals founded?
Recursion Pharmaceuticals was founded in 2013. It employs 501 to 1,000 people.
Where is Recursion Pharmaceuticals based?
Recursion Pharmaceuticals is headquartered in Salt Lake City, United States, in the North America region.
How does Recursion Pharmaceuticals make money?
Six revenue lines are on record. Partnership Revenue - Sanofi is the primary driver. The others are partnership Revenue - Roche/Genentech, partnership Revenue - Bayer, partnership Revenue - Merck KGaA, platform Licensing - BioNeMo and milestone Revenue.
Who are Recursion Pharmaceuticals's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Valo Health, Atomwise, XtalPi, Schrödinger, Insitro, Insilico Medicine, BenevolentAI and Isomorphic Labs. Emerging players are AbCellera and Iambic (formerly Entasis Therapeutics).
Does Recursion Pharmaceuticals have an API?
Yes. Phenom-Beta foundation model is available through NVIDIA BioNeMo Cloud API for non-commercial use, allowing developers to access the microscopy image embedding model programmatically. Developer documentation is at www.nvidia.com/en-us/clara/bionemo.
What industry is Recursion Pharmaceuticals in?
Recursion Pharmaceuticals's product category is AI Drug Discovery Platform. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HLAGAJAO, AI/ML Platforms for Drug Discovery & Experiment Optimization, with a secondary code of HLAIALAA, Drug Discovery (Target ID/Validation & Hit Discovery). Its NAICS code is 541714 and its SIC code is 2834.