Merck adds to biopharma’s AI agenda with up to $510M+ Protillion pact

(June 17, 2026) by Tristan Manalac

Merck will use Protillion Biosciences’ tech to design biologic therapies for therapies across undisclosed indications.

The next stop on biopharma’s AI train is Merck, which is bringing on California’s Protillion Biosciences to combine large-scale data generation and AI design to advance a suite of novel biologic therapies.

Merck is making an undisclosed upfront payment, according to a Tuesday release, as well as offering up to $510 million in R&D and commercial milestones. The companies did not name the specific targets or disease areas they plan on addressing, only saying that they will collaborate on “multiple therapies.”

For its investment, Merck will gain access to Protillion’s Prot-MaP technology, a “megascale data generation platform” that the biotech claims will provide training sets specifically tailored to protein design AI models.