---
description: 173 AI-discovered programs now in clinical development with 80-90 percent Phase I success and Insilicos rentosertib is first fully AI-designed drug to clear Phase IIa but overall clinical failure rates remain unchanged making later-stage success the key unknown
type: claim
domain: health
created: 2026-02-17
source: "AI drug discovery pipeline data 2026; Insilico Medicine rentosertib Phase IIa; Isomorphic Labs $3B partnerships; WEF drug discovery analysis January 2026"
confidence: likely
---

# AI compresses drug discovery timelines by 30-40 percent but has not yet improved the 90 percent clinical failure rate that determines industry economics

AI-discovered drug candidates entering clinical trials have grown exponentially: 3 in 2016, 17 in 2020, 67 in 2023, an estimated 173 by 2026. AI compresses preclinical candidate development from 3-4 years to 13-18 months and achieves 80-90% Phase I success rates compared to 40-65% for traditional compounds. The discovery phase has been shortened from 5-6 years to approximately 1 year in leading cases.

Insilico Medicine achieved the most significant milestone: positive Phase IIa results for rentosertib (ISM001-055) in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis -- the first drug with both target and molecule designed entirely by AI to show efficacy. Isomorphic Labs (DeepMind spinoff) raised $600M with $3B in Eli Lilly and Novartis partnerships, expecting first Phase I trials by late 2026. Recursion merged with Exscientia to create an end-to-end platform.

The critical question is whether AI can move the needle beyond Phase I. The pharmaceutical industry's overall ~90% clinical failure rate has not demonstrably changed. "Faster to clinic" is proven; "more likely to work in patients" is not. If AI cracks later-stage success rates, the economic impact dwarfs everything else in healthcare -- a single percentage point improvement in Phase II/III success is worth billions. But the proof is still ahead of us.


### Additional Evidence (extend)
*Source: [[2026-03-19-vida-ai-biology-acceleration-healthspan-constraint]] | Added: 2026-03-19*

Smith 2026 provides concrete evidence of compression magnitude: Ginkgo Bioworks + GPT-5 compressed 150 years of protein engineering into weeks. This is consistent with Amodei's 10-20x prediction (50-100 years → 5-10 years) and confirms that discovery-phase compression is already happening at scale, not speculative.

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Relevant Notes:
- recursive improvement is the engine of human progress because we get better at getting better -- AI drug discovery is recursive improvement applied to pharma R&D
- [[continuous health monitoring is converging on a multi-layer sensor stack of ambient wearables periodic patches and environmental sensors processed through AI middleware]] -- new drugs from AI discovery feed into the monitoring-driven care model
- clinical trials should use adaptive allocation to minimize harm to patients during the trial not just produce clean data for future patients -- adaptive trial designs could improve the 90% clinical failure rate by reallocating patients away from failing arms mid-trial rather than running fixed protocols to completion

Topics:
- livingip overview
- health and wellness
