The newly announced partnership between Moderna and OpenAI provides a real-world example of what can happen when companies lean into generative AI.
background: Moderna went from a little-known pharmaceutical startup with no approved product to one of the biggest players in the global healthcare industry when its COVID-19 vaccine was approved in 2020. grown.
OpenAI saw a similar meteoric rise. Although well-known in the tech world (co-founders include big names like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Microsoft, and AWS), the world actually started paying for his company. When we released ChatGPT in December 2022. Note.
So both companies have incredible momentum and huge investments, but what can Moderna and OpenAI offer each other?
“At Moderna, we strongly believe that our work with ChatGPT and OpenAI will change the world.”
Stéphane Bancel
Moderna's goal is to develop new medicines. The company currently has 15 mRNA-based drugs in its pipeline for diseases ranging from cancer to HIV, and it needs at least some of them to bring them to market. The company is facing billions of dollars in losses in 2023 and won't be able to survive on just one approved product, especially as fewer people get vaccinated as memories of the pandemic fade.
Meanwhile, OpenAI needs to find a way to turn its LLM, the AI model that allows platforms like ChatGPT to have human-like conversations, into a profitable product. CEO Sam Altman said the cost of training and running AI is “huge.” ” and “I'm tearful”, but the company still does not earn more than its costs.
“If we had to do it the old biopharmaceutical way, we might need 100,000 people today.”
Stéphane Bancel
ChatGPT Enterprise: OpenAI seems to rely on corporate customers to make a profit.
In August 2023, the company launched ChatGPT Enterprise, an advanced, high-security version of its popular chatbot that organizations can customize using internal data, and in early April, Altman announced that it will be working with hundreds of Fortune 500 companies. I pitched this service to executives at
But there's a big difference between telling people that your service can change the way your company operates and showing them how your service can improve their productivity. That's where the newly announced partnership between Moderna and OpenAI comes into play.
On April 24, Moderna and OpenAI announced a collaboration starting in early 2023 that will see Moderna leverage OpenAI's technology for everything from custom GPTs to analyze dosing decisions to answering employee questions about company policies. He announced that he has shared details of all the ways in which he has done this.
CEO Stéphane Bancel said integrating OpenAI's chatbot into Moderna's operations increases productivity and helps the company move closer to its goal of bringing new products to market.
“If we had to do it the old biopharmaceutical way, we might need 100,000 people today,” Bancel says. “We truly believe that by leveraging technology and AI to scale our company, we can maximize our impact on thousands of patients.”
“We’re looking at all our business processes and how we can redesign them using AI.”
Stéphane Bancel
The big picture: Moderna isn't the first company to adopt ChatGPT Enterprise (an entire section of OpenAI's website is dedicated to customer stories). But the company is the best known of the bunch and seems to wholeheartedly support what OpenAI is selling.
“At Moderna, we strongly believe that our work with ChatGPT and OpenAI will change the world,” said Bancel. “We’re looking at all business processes, from legal to research to manufacturing to commercial, and how we can redesign them using AI.”
If the partnership with Moderna allows OpenAI to lock down more enterprise customers (perhaps some of the Fortune 500 executives Altman lined up earlier this month), that could be a big deal for the company as it strives for profitability. It could be a big win.
If Moderna can develop new life-saving drugs faster, that could be a big win for everyone.
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