BenchSci Announces Three-Year License Agreement with Sanofi to Access and Use BenchSci’s ASCEND Platform

The license will provide Sanofi scientists worldwide access to BenchSci’s ASCEND platform, which aims to accelerate drug discovery across multiple therapeutic areas.

TORONTO—September 30, 2025—BenchSci, a world leader in AI solutions for preclinical research and drug discovery, today announced a three-year agreement with Sanofi to deploy and use BenchSci’s ASCEND™ platform across Sanofi’s global preclinical research organization. BenchSci’s ASCEND platform aims to significantly accelerate drug discovery efforts, enhance research efficiency, and drive innovation through the integration of cutting-edge AI and machine learning, which Sanofi will leverage through this license.

Under the agreement, Sanofi will deploy ASCEND, a neurosymbolic disease biology AI platform designed as an AI co-pilot for scientists, providing access to preclinical scientists and contractors across its global sites worldwide. ASCEND aims to unravel the black box of disease biology at scale—turning the world’s biomedical knowledge into predictive discovery for the future of drug research. To this end, ASCEND integrates public scientific findings with proprietary internal data into its Biological Evidence Knowledge Graph (BEKG), which serves as a truth engine of biology. This provides a holistic view of the world's scientific findings and organizational research, empowering researchers to generate novel insights, optimize experimental designs, and accelerate the entire discovery process. The result is a significant increase in productivity across the preclinical R&D pipeline.

“Sanofi’s commitment to embedding AI across its research programs demonstrates how science can move faster, uncover new biology, and transform the way medicines are developed,” said Liran Belenzon, CEO & Co-Founder, BenchSci.

The license reflects Sanofi’s broader AI strategy to integrate AI into every stage of research and development. With ASCEND, Sanofi aims to build a long-term, AI-enabled foundation for scientific innovation across priority therapeutic areas.

About BenchSci

BenchSci is a world leader in AI solutions for drug discovery on a mission to exponentially increase the speed and quality of life-saving R&D to help bring new medicines to patients faster. We apply AI to understand how disease biology works throughout the drug discovery pipeline to solve the number one reason drug discovery projects fail—getting the biology wrong. Our platform, ASCEND, acts as a scalable AI assistant for preclinical organizations, increasing the productivity of the preclinical R&D pipeline across therapeutic areas. Backed by top-tier investors, including Generation Investment Management, iNovia Capital, TCV, F-Prime, Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), and Golden Ventures, BenchSci has raised over $200 million. Our platform accelerates science at 16 top-20 pharmaceutical companies and over 4,500 leading research centers worldwide. We’re a Deloitte Technology Fast 50™ and Fast 500™ winner. For more information about BenchSci, visit www.benchsci.com.