USA Trends and Developments Contributed by: David McIntosh, Matt Byron, Zoe Dettelbach, Paul Matheke and Toby Shao, Ropes & Gray
first half of the year, when publicly announced licens- ing deal value reached approximately USD119.9 bil- lion, with Q2 alone contributing USD59 billion. By the end of the year, licensing total deal values had climbed to over USD250 billion across 516 deals, significantly outpacing the yearly volume of the past five years. The cadence and size of upfront payments in licens- ing deals increased over 2024 benchmarks – by mid- 2025, there were 21 licensing deals with disclosed upfront payments of USD100 million or more, com- pared with 34 such deals in all of 2024. Drawing a sharp contrast to venture financings in 2025, licensing transactions delivered 41 upfronts exceeding USD100 million by the end of Q4. Cross-border dynamics, particularly involving China- based firms, played a prominent role in 2025 licensing activity. As noted above, five of the top ten 2025 R&D licensing partnerships involved China-based firms, including landmark alliances such as the GSK-Hengrui deal (approximately USD12.5 billion potential value; USD500 million upfront) and the Pfizer-3SBio deal (approximately USD6.3 billion potential value; approx- imately USD1.25 billion upfront plus equity), evidenc- ing China’s expanding role as a source of early-stage assets across respiratory, immunology and oncology. Clinical and modality focus areas for licensing deals remained broad in 2025. Oncology and cardiometa- bolic indications figured prominently, as did RNA inter- ference (“RNAi”) deals. Examples include: • Swiss giant Novartis licensing global rights ex- China to multiple dyslipidaemia programmes from Chinese start-up Argo, with USD160 million upfront and up to USD5.2 billion in milestones; • US biotech firm Braveheart Bio’s licensing of Hen- grui Pharma’s Phase III small molecule HRS-1893 to treat hypertrophic cardiomyopathy; and • California-based Genentech and Oxford-based OMass Therapeutics’ small molecule licensing deal with USD65 million in upfront payments eligible for more than USD400 million in milestone payments focused on irritable bowel disease. PwC expects licensing to remain a primary vector for accessing innovation in 2026, driven by the same
factors that drive the M&A market – mounting loss- of-exclusivity pressures and licensees’ emphasis on differentiated, later-stage assets and platform option- ality. More specifically, PwC expects deal-making to accelerate with disciplined portfolio-shaping, cross- border co-development, and flexible structures such as options, milestones, and royalties to manage risk while securing scarce innovation. A CNBC report con- curred, citing the continued threat of biopharma’s pat- ent cliff as driving licensing activities. Life Sciences Deal-Making Trends Looking Forward to 2026 Companies continued to test AI applications in life sciences innovation Integration of AI platforms deepened in 2025 , but real impact, according to Deloitte, depended on data, workflows and governance. Medtech and biopharma moved from pilots toward broader deployment of generative AI in the development of new platforms, lab processes and day-to-day operations in 2025, with value hinging on productivity data and standard- ised lab processes to scale safely and reliably. For example, as detailed by the World Economic Forum , Novartis explored a generative design approach that computationally screened 15 million compounds for brain-penetrant degraders and “digital cell” simula- tions that toggled thousands of genes to identify new ADPKD targets, showing measurable progress in the area. Tech-bio partnerships scaled “lab-in-the-loop” dis- covery in 2025. Biopharma paired internal models and proprietary datasets with cloud and accelerat- ed-compute partners in an attempt to drive iterative design-make-test-learn loops at scale, enabled by digitised experiments, interoperable platforms and standardised data capture to make AI outputs repro- ducible across sites and partners. “Technology con- vergence” efforts – combining AI with robotics, simu- lation/digital twins and other advanced technologies – also expanded in 2025, restructuring value chains and highlighting governance needs as deployments scaled. Commentators said they expect broader AI adoption to continue across target discovery, generative chem- istry and predictive safety – paired with stronger mod-
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