The Hong Kong-listed firm says it has made an AI-based drug discovery with the help of a Greer Bay Area merger.

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XtalPi Holdings, Inc Artificial Intelligence (AI) A drug discovery company based in the Greater Bay Area is transforming the biopharmaceutical industry by applying AI and robotics to transform traditional approaches to drug development.

The company’s self-developed large language model (LLM), technology support Discussion GPTAs generative AI services, it has helped increase the success rate of chemical experiments to 90 percent from 20 to 30 percent, said Zhang Piu, chief scientific officer of Shenzhen-based XtalPi.

“There are a lot of good opportunities (for artificial intelligence) in vertical fields,” Zhang told The Post at the China: Greater Bay Area 2025 conference in Guangzhou. “For the pharmaceutical industry, we see great potential in applying LLMs to specific domains.”

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Zhang estimates that the integration of robotics and AI will reduce the time for drug discovery from four years to just one or two.

Peggy Sito (left), Business Editor of South China Morning Post chats with Fosun Health CEO Hu Hang, Professor Li Hongsheng, Chief Scientist of Medical Foundation Models at SenseTime Healthcare, MingMed Vice President Tu Fuquan and Scientific Officer of XtalPi. January 15 Zhang Piu in Guangzhou Photo: Nora Tam alt=Peggy Sito (left), Business Editor of South China Morning Post with Fosun Health CEO Hu Hang, Professor Li Hongsheng, Chief Scientist of Medical Foundation Models at SenseTime Healthcare, MingMed Vice President Tu Fuquan , and XtalPi Chief Scientific Officer Zhang Piu On January 15 in Guangzhou. Photo: Nora Tam>

In the year Founded in 2014 by three quantum physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, XtalPi established its research and development base in Shenzhen a year later. Located on the border of the two cities in the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Cooperation Zone, the company is expected to become a key player in drug development serving four of the five largest pharmaceutical companies. It has formulated domestic industrial policies.

According to Zhang, the company’s growth has been fueled by regional synergies created in the Gulf region, particularly through talent acquisition, supply chain partnerships and urban fundraising.

The cooperation zone has attracted various industry players, including biotech and pharmaceutical startups, service providers and regulatory agencies, Zhang said.

XtalPi’s automated chemical laboratory in Shenzhen, believed to be the largest in the world, employs about 200 robots for AI-driven experiments, which require significant hardware support. The proliferation of robotics and logistics companies in the Greater Bay Area has made things easier, Zhang said.

The company has benefited from Hong Kong’s status as a financial center. It went public in the city last year as the first to be listed under a new law designed to attract strategic startups.

Geographical and technological advantages have positioned XtalPi for growth in both domestic and international markets. Globally, the company’s primary focus remains on biopharmaceutical innovation, particularly in the Americas, Europe, and East and Southeast Asia. It is also expanding into materials science and renewable energy.

Currently, the company’s revenue is split between domestic and overseas markets, Zhang said.

XtalPi is looking beyond China’s borders. In November, it partnered with Sinar Mas Multiarta, a leading financial services provider in Indonesia, to use quantum physics, AI and robotics to boost research and development of innovative products including medicines and new materials in the country.

China has rapidly integrated generative AI into its biomedical industry over the past two years, with significant investment from major pharmaceutical companies to improve R&D efficiency. According to a JPMorgan report in May, the chronic and autoimmune drug market is expected to be an important growth area in the country, with a market size estimated at $20 billion by 2030.

Despite these advances, Zhang noted, China still lags behind the US in terms of early-stage innovation and basic research in biomedicine.

“In the future, we need to develop drugs that include new targets and new methods,” Zhang said, adding that both Shenzhen and Hong Kong have a lot of good basic research results that have yet to be commercialized.

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