April 30, 2026

Acquired taste

Hi there,

Here is this week’s Hot or Not.

Hot: Eli Lilly’s acquisition strategy 

Eli Lilly has closed 6 acquisitions in 2026.

The deals span oncology, genetic medicine, neuroscience, and AI-driven drug discovery, reflecting a multi-front bet on the next decade of growth. Its most recent acquisitions include: 

• Ajax Therapeutics for blood cancer
• Centessa Pharmaceuticals for sleep disorders
• Kelonia and Orna for CAR-T cell therapy

Track who the pharma giant will acquire next on our Eli Lilly Strategy Map.

Not: Human drivers

Wayve just raised a $60M Series D extension from AMD, Qualcomm Ventures, and ARM Holdings. 

With Nvidia already a backer, four of the world's most important semiconductor companies are now behind the driverless car platform. The chip mix gives Wayve broad coverage across automotive compute architectures, supporting its hardware-agnostic AI driver strategy.

See all 90+ companies shaping self-driving at scale in our autonomous driving market map.

Hot: Crypto valuations

Crypto companies are commanding record valuations with very small teams.

The average valuation per employee for digital assets companies that raised in Q1'26 hit $6.4M, nearly 2x the $3.5M average across all fintechs. Seven of the top 10 highest-valued fintech teams this quarter are crypto companies.

Blockchain technology automates the settlement, reconciliation, and custody work that would require human ops teams elsewhere. As a result, all fintechs are now being benchmarked against a faster, leaner curve.

Explore the trend in our State of Fintech Q1’26 report. 

Lukewarm: Fully autonomous labs

Pharma R&D is shifting from manual experimentation toward AI-guided, increasingly automated discovery workflows.

Lilly is already partnering with Nvidia to build a drug discovery supercomputer, calling AI a "scientific collaborator" embedded in every layer of its workflows. 

But fully autonomous labs are not mainstream yet. Leading startups Periodic Labs and Lila Sciences are still testing and refining their products, with adoption limited and commercial maturity still early.

See the full breakdown in our 2026 tech trends report.

The +1

A stampede of error. What scale is this? 

I love you.

Anand

@asanwal 

Co-Founder & Exec Chair

P.S. Don’t miss the 10th annual launch of our AI 100 list. Register for the briefing here.

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