Bristol Myers Squibb Deploys Schrödinger's Bunsen AI Co-Scientist at Scale to Accelerate Drug Discovery
Key Insights
Schrödinger (search) and Bristol Myers Squibb (search) have entered a strategic agreement to deploy Bunsen (search), an agentic AI co-scientist, across BMS's research organization at scale.
Bunsen (search) combines AI with physics-based simulation to help researchers plan, execute, and interpret complex molecular discovery workflows, expanding beyond general-purpose AI systems.
The collaboration builds on a long-standing partnership and includes co-development of novel functionality for large-scale chemical exploration and integration with RetroSynth (search), Schrödinger (search)'s AI-driven synthesis planning platform.
Schrödinger (search), Inc. (Nasdaq: SDGR) announced on August 5, 2026, a strategic agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb (search) (BMS) to deploy Bunsen (search), Schrödinger's agentic AI co-scientist, within BMS's research organization at scale. The agreement significantly expands the application of Schrödinger's computational platform, building on a long-standing partnership in which BMS has routinely utilized the company's industry-leading tools.
"BMS is a long-standing customer and collaborator, and they have been an industry leader in integrating computation into drug discovery. We are thrilled they are deploying Bunsen (search) at a large scale," said Robert Abel, Chief Scientific Officer, Platform, of Schrödinger (search). "Adopting Bunsen and our computational platform at scale will empower a broader group of scientists to embrace a predict-first computational approach."
Bunsen (search): Purpose-Built for Molecular Discovery
Unlike general-purpose AI systems that only retrieve and summarize existing scientific information, Bunsen (search) is optimized to execute Schrödinger (search)'s validated, physics-based computational methods. The platform helps researchers across four key dimensions of the discovery workflow: understanding scientific objectives through natural language, planning computational strategies, executing sophisticated multi-step discovery workflows, and interpreting results into actionable scientific insight.
Under the new agreement, Schrödinger (search) will collaborate with BMS scientists on developing novel functionality within Bunsen (search) designed to enable large-scale chemical exploration. The collaboration also extends to RetroSynth (search), Schrödinger's AI-driven synthesis planning platform, which integrates real-time intelligence across billions of building blocks to predict plausible, bench-ready synthetic pathways. By coupling automated retrosynthetic analysis with molecular design, RetroSynth enables high-throughput evaluation of large chemical spaces, helping ensure computationally prioritized molecules can be efficiently synthesized in the laboratory.
Industry Perspective
Stephen Johnson, Vice President of Computational Sciences at Bristol Myers Squibb (search), underscored the strategic importance of the deployment: "Over the past several years, AI has become a key enabler for our scientists, allowing them to scale their creativity and scientific expertise across our research organization. Bunsen (search) is another capability we are adding to that toolkit, one that allows our scientists to think differently about how physics-based tools can be used to navigate molecular design space and accelerate the discovery of innovative medicines for patients."
The agreement follows Schrödinger (search)'s July 27, 2026 launch of the early access version of Bunsen (search), which was introduced in collaboration with NVIDIA (search) and Google Cloud (search). Those partnerships provide a co-engineered full stack AI platform, including Google Cloud's elastic computing infrastructure and integration with the NVIDIA BioNeMo Agent Toolkit and NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs, to support early Bunsen customers in scaling their use of the platform across discovery programs.
Expanding the User Base for Computational Chemistry
A key differentiator of Bunsen (search) is its ability to make advanced computational methods accessible to experienced drug hunters who are not computational chemists. By enabling computational chemists to run concurrent research sessions and accomplish more across multiple programs, while simultaneously lowering the barrier for non-specialists, Bunsen aims to expand the user base for Schrödinger (search)'s computational platform. Ramy Farid, Ph.D., president and CEO of Schrödinger, noted during the initial Bunsen launch that the company's throughput-based licensing model is "ideally suited to capture the value of this expanding utilization."
The early access version of Bunsen (search) is currently available to select customers, with full commercial release expected by the end of 2026.