Simcere president takes IT department under direct control, mandates AI use
36Kr reports that Simcere Pharmaceutical president Zhou Yunshu brought the company's information department under his direct management in 2026 and said at a recent media briefing that managers are required, not merely encouraged, to embrace AI in their work. The company embedded AI engineers into business units so that AI could gradually move from an auxiliary tool to a basic function across target discovery, clinical work, drug manufacturing, marketing and operations, and in July 2026 Simcere signed a drug discovery and development collaboration with US AI drug discovery company Schrödinger. The report also notes that for pharma companies without an AI-native background, measuring AI's actual value remains difficult, and that Simcere spent a large number of tokens on early exploration.
The report argues that large pharma's existing R&D systems are already highly efficient, and that turning AI into an internal capability rather than an add-on is harder at the organizational level than at the technical level.
文｜胡香赟
编辑｜海若镜
2026年，先声药业（02096.HK）总裁周云曙把信息部划归自己直管了。
近期的一场媒体交流会中，他对36氪提到：“在先声，我们现在要求管理层带头，在工作中‘拥抱’AI，不是提倡而是必须。AI的价值来自如何应用，首先要真正去用、会用、不断训练，这是基础。”
放在全球制药企业积极拥抱AI的语境里，这个动作不算令人意外。海外，跨国药企已经开始重资产投入。例如，礼来与英伟达共建AI联合创新实验室。在国内，9月下旬，金斯瑞、近岸蛋白等多只“AI4S概念股”轮番大涨；一级市场上，不少“小天才们”用AI改变生命科学的叙事，首轮融资便能拿到数亿元估值。
不过，一个很难回避的现象是，大药企既有的成熟研发体系运转多年，效率已经很高，AI想要真正嵌入其中，从外挂工具变成内化能力，比技术本身更难的是组织层面的松动。毕竟，对于不自带AI基因的药企来说，怎样评估AI在工作中的实际价值就是个大问题。
#Simcere#Schrödinger#Eli Lilly#Nvidia#AbbVie#Roche#Ipsen#Boehringer Ingelheim