By Miguel Motta, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Executive Director, San Diego, Biocom

One of the distinct privileges of our position at Biocom is the vantage point it affords us. Serving more than 1,800 member companies, from startups to multinational pharmaceutical organizations, we have a unique window into the trends and forces shaping the industry. Among those forces, artificial intelligence is already playing a transformative role in how companies discover, develop, and deliver innovation.

Our engagement with AI in life science has been built deliberately. In early April, our Policy & Advocacy team hosted member companies for a Sacramento lobby day, where AI’s implications for California’s regulatory and policy environment were front and center. Shortly thereafter, at our third annual Converge Summit, we convened some of the most innovative minds at the intersection of technology and life science. Together, these experiences reinforced what our members have been telling us: AI is no longer a future consideration, it is a present-tense transformation.

From AI Companies to AI-Enabled Companies

Not long ago, the conversation centered on a distinct category of companies built specifically around machine learning. That framing has already evolved. What we observe across our membership today is more sweeping: virtually every life science company is integrating AI into at least one part of its processes, from drug target identification, clinical trial design, manufacturing, and patient stratification. The question is no longer whether a company will embrace AI, but how fast and how deeply.

Iambic Therapeutics is a compelling example from within our own community. Under CEO Tom Miller, Iambic has demonstrated how AI-native drug design can compress timelines that once took years into months. The implications for the future of health with AI mean fewer untreated diseases and better quality of life for chronic patients.

The Big Questions from Converge

Conversations at our Converge Summit kept returning to four interconnected themes: the speed and cost at which drugs can reach patients; the new business models and cost structures available to AI-enabled companies; what AI means for the life science workforce as we know it today; and how regulatory frameworks must evolve to keep pace, approving therapies more efficiently while maintaining the highest safety standards.

None of these questions have simple answers, but all of them demand an engaged, informed community, which is exactly what Biocom is committed to building.

What’s Next

Biocom will continue to lead this conversation through our Converge Summit, Converge Meet-Ups, C-Suite Series and policy advocacy work at the state and federal level. We are also excited to announce our new partnership with Octane, reflecting our continued investment in the medtech community and the dynamic convergence of AI, digital health and medical devices.

The transformation is already underway. We look forward to helping our members lead it.