On May 27, XTALPI (02228) announced that its collaboration with DoveTree is progressing well, and the company has received the second payment of $19 million as stipulated under the final agreement. In recent years, thanks to the continuous iteration of AI models and processes, along with ongoing data accumulation, the scaling effect of XTALPI's "AI + Robotics" platform business has become increasingly evident. Driven by extensive commercialization partnerships, XTALPI can now consistently validate its platform capabilities through the rolling fulfillment of orders, upfront payments, milestones, and revenue shares. The collaboration with DoveTree, established last year with a total order size of approximately HKD 47 billion (USD 5.99 billion), is a concrete manifestation of the "AI + Robotics" platform value entering a phase of large-scale realization.
Following the execution of the final cooperation agreement last year, XTALPI received the first upfront payment of $51 million from DoveTree within ten days. In less than a year, from the completion of the IP transfer to the first preclinical candidate molecule entering the IND-enabling stage, the triggering of the second milestone payment demonstrates the sincerity of DoveTree's partnership and its positive stance on developing the value of the "AI + Robotics" platform. If investors believe that subsequent milestones can be achieved at a similar pace, once this "predictable rhythm" is established, the DoveTree series pipeline could evolve from a one-time milestone event into a predictable recurring revenue stream.
XTALPI reported full-year 2025 revenue of 803 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 201.2%, achieving its first annual profit. As partnership payments begin to arrive regularly, the sustainability of profitability gains an additional layer of support from external validation.
**The Strategic Choice of the "Harvard Drug God"**
The cooperation agreement between XTALPI and DoveTree has garnered widespread attention in the global industry not only due to the substantial size of the deal but also because of DoveTree's founder, Professor Gregory Verdine, known as the "Harvard Drug God." A legendary figure spanning science, industry, and investment, Professor Verdine is highly esteemed in the field. He elucidated the molecular mechanisms of DNA repair and epigenetic DNA methylation, became the youngest tenured professor in the Harvard Chemistry Department in nearly 50 years at the age of 35, and is hailed as a pioneer in chemical biology.
Beyond his outstanding scientific achievements, Professor Verdine is a leading entrepreneur, having founded or co-founded 12 biotech companies, seven of which have gone public. Several drugs/therapies he led have received FDA approval. Notably, the cumulative sales of the hepatitis C drug he helped develop have exceeded $10 billion. What made Professor Verdine famous in the industry is his pioneering work on "stapled peptides" technology, exploring traditionally undruggable targets, establishing him as a leader in novel therapeutic modalities.
In 2011, Professor Verdine co-founded Warp Drive, where he led the team in creating the first drug discovery engine for designing molecular glues and applied this new model to discover the first lead compound targeting the oncogene KRAS. After Warp Drive was acquired by Revolution Medicines in 2018, this foundational work gave rise to three clinical-stage KRAS antagonists. One of these, daraxonrasib, holds the potential to revolutionize global pancreatic cancer treatment. On April 13 this year, Revolution Medicines announced positive topline results from its Phase III RASolute 302 study. The results showed that once-daily oral daraxonrasib significantly improved progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) compared to standard chemotherapy in previously treated metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) patients. Data indicated that this oral pan-RAS inhibitor nearly doubled the median overall survival and reduced the risk of death by 60%. These results represent a potentially transformative advancement in patient treatment and signify the product's potential to redefine the pancreatic cancer treatment landscape. Upon the news, the capital market surged. Revolution Medicines' stock price soared over 40% intraday, closing up 41.35%, with its market capitalization skyrocketing nearly $8 billion overnight to $27 billion.
Notably, Revolution Medicines' technology platform originated from the 2018 acquisition of Warp Drive Bio, which brought novel chemical entity screening capabilities based on natural product discovery. The company sequences soil bacterial genomes through its platform to mine compounds that have naturally evolved to target RAS proteins—a method that significantly increases drug discovery success rates.
Additionally, in the investment field, Professor Verdine has served as a venture partner at Third Rock Ventures and WuXi Healthcare Ventures and is currently an investment partner at the renowned US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). It is evident that Professor Gregory Verdine possesses deep scientific understanding and extensive development experience regarding undruggable targets. His and DoveTree's choice to partner with XTALPI clearly reflects their recognition of XTALPI's validated "AI + Robotics" platform R&D and delivery capabilities spanning small molecules, large molecules, ADCs, and molecular glues.
Professor Gregory Verdine, founder of DoveTree, stated, "XTALPI has built an impressive platform whose capabilities are founded on the deep integration of AI, physics-based molecular design, and automated synthesis and optimization. These integrated capabilities have the potential to simultaneously enhance the speed and quality of drug discovery for complex biological targets. We are pleased with the progress of the current collaboration and look forward to advancing more projects into clinical development."
For XTALPI, collaborating with DoveTree signifies that the value of its "AI + Robotics" platform has received strong endorsement from an industry leader and gained significant support from a top-tier biological team led by him in target selection and subsequent commercial development. This partnership goes beyond a single order; it deeply integrates the technological efficiency of the AI platform with top-tier biological judgment.
**Powerful Alliance Enters Next Development Phase**
In XTALPI's latest announcement, besides the receipt of the $19 million collaboration payment, the latest progress in the company's cooperation with DoveTree is also worthy of investors' close attention. According to the previously established cooperation framework, XTALPI utilizes its end-to-end AI drug discovery platform based on AI + robotics to discover and develop small molecule and antibody candidate drugs for multiple targets selected by DoveTree, primarily in oncology, immunology & inflammation, neurological diseases, and metabolic disorders.
Now, nearly a year into the collaboration, significant results are imminent, indirectly confirming XTALPI's efficient execution. According to the announcement, the current collaboration with DoveTree is progressing well, with some pipelines demonstrating excellent research data and broad commercial value potential. One pan-cancer driver high-value asset has taken the lead in entering the IND-enabling research stage, showing clear target intervention effects and an excellent selectivity window in preliminary biological activity validation.
DoveTree's choice to make the payment at this critical juncture and to agree on further in-depth cooperation in the challenging field of undruggable targets, promoting R&D work including molecular glues, and continuously accelerating the clinical translation of candidate drugs, signifies that the collaboration between XTALPI and DoveTree has entered a new development stage. It also indirectly illustrates DoveTree's high level of trust in the value of XTALPI's "AI + Robotics" platform.
For XTALPI, DoveTree is not an isolated case. Recently, the company's collaboration with SIGSCIENCE led to the rapid FDA IND approval of SIGX2649, the world's first pan-TEAD inhibitor; its collaboration with OncoOne on the PRMT5 inhibitor PEP08 has advanced to Phase I clinical trials in Australia and Taiwan; and its incubated company, LaiMang Biotech, completed a nearly 200 million yuan Series A financing, with its metabolism-enhanced CAR-T achieving 100% complete response in hematological malignancies and lupus erythematosus. These progress points scattered across different news items, when viewed individually, represent project advancements; together, they form a repeatedly validated delivery record for XTALPI.
**Summary**
As market expectations for AI drug discovery shift from "storytelling" to "delivering results," with DoveTree's payments actually arriving and molecules genuinely entering IND-enabling stages, the market's valuation logic transitions from "possibility" to "confirmation." Currently, the "high upfront payment, high milestone, high revenue share" cooperation established with DoveTree has been further confirmed following the partner's second payment.
The secondary market has responded positively. On May 28, while the Hang Seng Index fell over 1%, XTALPI's stock price surged over 7% intraday, reflecting high expectations from secondary market investors for the collaboration and recognition of the company's long-term value.
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