While this year’s event brought fewer major announcements, it revealed clear signs of an industry in transition as shifts within the business, technology and scientific landscape converge.  As organizations look ahead, success will depend on strategies that intentionally balance all three, aligning commercial priorities, digital capabilities, and scientific advancement to navigate the year ahead with clarity and confidence.

Here our experts share their key takeaways from JPM Week 2026 and what they mean for life sciences companies as they navigate a world of multi-dimensional change.

1. M&A is heating up, China is emerging as an innovation hub, and growth constraints remain.

Even without the usual stack of announcements, JPM Week revealed a clear undercurrent across leadership conversations: M&A is about to pick up.

After a period of caution, biopharma organizations are once again viewing partnerships, targeted acquisitions, and ecosystem expansion as critical levers to accelerate innovation. Over the next 18-24 months, we expect to see companies doubling down on:

  • Pipeline acceleration through targeted innovation plays
  • Strategic partnerships to access new modalities
  • Ecosystem collaborations enabling scale and speed

In a market increasingly shaped by specialty therapies, chronic disease management, and patient-centric service models, M&A is emerging as an essential enabler of growth.

There are also clear signals that investments, partnerships and M&A activity is shifting to China, as the country solidifies its position as both an innovation hotbed and major source of novel therapeutics. Recent announcements such as Novartis paying $50 million in cash for a China-based biotech program and AstraZeneca committing  investments of $15 billion in China through 2030, serve as broader industry tell-tales of China as both an innovation hub and critical commercial market.

Finally, stubborn growth constraints remain, with intensified scrutiny on drug pricing, reimbursement, and market access across regions. This underscored the idea that success will hinge not just on scientific breakthroughs, but on navigating increasingly complex regulatory environments and volatile pricing markets.

2. AI moves from experimentation to essential Infrastructure, especially in R&D.

Perhaps the most significant shift at JPM 2026 was the universal recognition that AI has now clearly crossed the threshold from proof-of-concept (PoC) into operational reality.

This was felt not just in the specific industry sessions, but everywhere in San Francisco. We heard about AI, genAI and agentic AI as commodities you need to adopt at scale. Likewise, AI‑driven robotics and deep‑tech engineering are no longer futuristic, they are being adopted at an accelerated pace.

In life sciences, these broader tech trends are manifesting in the following ways:

  • AI has become a core driver of R&D productivity, with the greatest multiplier effects emerging in drug discovery. This was seen most clearly through partnership announcements between NVIDIA and Lilly for a co-innovation lab and Thermo Fisher Scientific’s partnership with NVIDIA to build out its autonomous laboratory infrastructure.
  • Use cases have matured and proven clear outcomes, with tangible value in cycle-time reduction and PoC optimization;
  • Expectations for stakeholder engagement, including doctors, patient and payers, are soaring.

This shift is setting a new benchmark for what “innovation-ready” organizations look like. This holds particularly decisive at a time where pharma is adding new modalities, such as RNA medicines, cell therapies, and gene therapies beyond the traditional paradigm of small molecules and antibodies.

3. The evolving role of pharma in care delivery.

Beyond R&D, conversations this year reflected a broader point: the role of pharma in care is changing. Growth in obesity treatments and new therapeutic modalities was accompanied by increased interest in direct-to-patient (DTP) models.

Further, the launches of ChatGPT Health and Claude for Healthcare just before this year’s conference, as well as the recent emergence of players such as Ro or Hims & Hers, are not coincidences. Rather they reflect the same shift on the technology side—offering AI-enabled health tools for patients and caregivers to strengthen education, engagement and intervention.

DTP has moved beyond experimentation, with pharma accelerating the build-out of new technical and organizational capabilities to manage the end-to-end patient experience—from initial exploration through medical decision support and care delivery. This comes with an opportunity for pharma companies to build deep proprietary data assets.

Despite pricing pressure and regulatory uncertainty, innovation in this space remains vibrant. Companies are experimenting with new ways to engage, support, and empower patients, creating a more integrated care ecosystem. As this space evolves, it is possible that the patient will reclaim more power within the health journey and that the care system will have to accommodate this new normal.

4. The reshaping of therapeutic areas and geographies of interest.

While oncology remains a key therapeutic area of focus, with companies developing novel therapies targeting various cancer types, neuroscience is gaining traction, as companies explore treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and mental health disorders. Novo and Lilly are also paving the way in addressing cardiometabolic diseases, such as obesity and diabetes, with new drugs and approaches.

Beyond traditional markets like the U.S., Europe and Japan, companies are also focused on expanding into Asia and also emerging economies.

Inside JPM Week: Collaboration, dialogue, and production‑ready innovation

Capgemini was deeply involved throughout JPM Week, contributing across client sessions, industry roundtables, and leadership discussions. A standout moment was our JPM Detox Breakfast at the Applied Innovation Exchange, which brought together more than 300 people across pharma, medtech, startups and industry.

Program highlights included:

  • A fireside chat with Salesforce’s Sharmin Nasrullah and Capgemini’s Barnabé Lecouteux which explored how Salesforce is leveraging its CRM stronghold to reshape the clinical operations paradigm.
  • Dr. Ashutosh Saxena’s perspective and fireside chat with Andreas Sjostrom and John Robbins on the rise of physical AI, including the concept of connected buildings as intelligent robotic systems.
  • Ready-to-deploy deep tech demos with Cambridge Consultants spanning generative AI for surgery (powered by NVIDIA), microchip-level DNA sequencing, and AI-enabled bioengineering.
  • A demonstration from Insilico Medicine’s Petrina Kamya, PhD, showcasing our joint work on agentic systems built on Pharmaceutical Superintelligence (PSI) and domain-specific LLMs.

We also unveiled our latest research  on the state of R&D in pharma at Fierce Pharma’s JPM Week: Smart bet, only option, or both?: Biopharma R&D turns to AI.This report presents new research from the Capgemini Research Institute about how AI is reshaping drug discovery, clinical trials, and regulatory processes—and what leaders must do to scale its impact.

Looking ahead: JPM 2027 and beyond

The sentiment across San Francisco was unmistakable: organizations that pair bold strategic moves with meaningful AI adoption will set the pace for the next era of healthcare innovation. Others are at risk of being disrupted.

We were encouraged by feedback from colleagues, partners, and clients who noted the visibility and impact of our capabilities across R&D, digital transformation, and emerging technologies.

Now, with JPM 2026 officially behind us, we focus on the future. The coming year promises rapid evolution in digital health, next-generation modalities, AI‑driven R&D, and patient‑centric service models.

One question remains across all areas: How can companies ensure that patients reap the greatest benefits from these (r)evolutions?