companies

Recursion Pharmaceuticals

Public techbio company mining tens of petabytes of proprietary cellular imaging data to find and design new drugs across oncology, rare disease and neuroscience.

Recursion was started in 2013 by Chris Gibson, Blake Borgeson and Dean Li out of the University of Utah, built on the idea that automated microscopy and machine learning could map how cells behave under genetic and chemical perturbation far faster than one-hypothesis-at-a-time biology. That phenomics engine, run on the company's own BioHive supercomputers, generates the bulk of the data feeding what Recursion now calls Recursion OS. In 2024 Recursion merged with UK-based Exscientia in an all-stock deal, combining Recursion's imaging and chemistry data with Exscientia's generative-design and DNA-encoded library expertise under one NASDAQ-listed roof (RXRX). Recursion OS is pitched as an end-to-end system spanning target discovery through clinical development, drawing on more than 36 petabytes of proprietary biological and chemical data and partnerships with Nvidia, Roche/Genentech, Sanofi and Bayer that have brought in milestone and licensing revenue even though the company has yet to get a self-discovered drug through FDA approval. Several early wholly-owned programs, including one for the rare disease neurofibromatosis type 2, were discontinued in 2024 after underwhelming trial results, which sharpened investor scrutiny of the platform's output relative to its cost. Co-founder Chris Gibson stepped down as CEO at the end of 2025, handing the role to Najat Khan, previously J&J's chief data science officer, effective January 1, 2026, with a mandate to tighten the pipeline and show clinical proof points.

Founded

2013

Headquarters

Salt Lake City, United States

Sector

applications