Moderna, DeepMind and Biocon discuss AI in science at Bloomberg forum in New Delhi

Three players from different parts of the biotech chain shared a stage on 13 October 2026 at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi. Noubar Afeyan, co-chair of Moderna and founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, Lila Ibrahim, Chief AI Readiness Officer at Google DeepMind, and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, founder and executive chairperson of Biocon, discussed with Francine Lacqua of Bloomberg how AI is changing scientific discovery. The source material contains no transcript of the remarks. That means no quotes here: instead, we look at what is known about the panel's lineup and why it is telling.

Who was on stage

Each participant represents a different stage of the path from idea to patient.

Afeyan works at the intersection of platform biology and venture company building. Moderna, which he helped found, built its business on mRNA, and Flagship Pioneering regularly launches biotech startups. In both, AI is needed to sift through hypotheses and design molecules.

DeepMind has become the best-known example of AI at work in fundamental science. AlphaFold predicts three-dimensional protein structures from amino acid sequences. The database of predictions, built together with EMBL-EBI, was opened to researchers, and in 2024 Demis Hassabis and John Jumper received part of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work. Ibrahim's title, Chief AI Readiness Officer, points to a different priority: it matters to the company not only to build models, but also to prepare organizations and society for them.

Biocon, founded by Mazumdar-Shaw in 1978, represents the manufacturing side: biopharmaceuticals and biosimilars, which means access to medicines at scale. For the industry, this is the main practical question. Discovering a molecule achieves nothing until it can be manufactured, certified and sold at an acceptable price.

Why New Delhi

India is among the world's largest producers of medicines, and AI development there is growing in parallel. The Bloomberg New Economy Forum brought together people who usually speak different languages: pharmaceutical executives, AI researchers and those responsible for production.

Key details about the panel:

• Date and place: 13 October 2026, Bloomberg New Economy Forum, New Delhi.
• Participants: Moderna and Flagship Pioneering, Google DeepMind, Biocon.
• Moderator: Francine Lacqua, Bloomberg.
• Topic: AI and scientific discovery.
• Published figures, forecasts and commitments: none are given in the source.

What this means in practice

The panel itself proves nothing. But it hints at where to look next. If molecule developers, AI labs and drugmakers are discussing the topic together, the bottleneck has shifted. Previously, the constraint was the speed of finding candidates. Now what matters more is validating results, winning regulatory approval and moving discoveries into production.

For readers following the industry, three things are worth watching. First: whether a full recording or transcript of the panel is released, and whether it includes concrete figures on development timelines and costs. Second: which partnerships between pharma and AI labs are announced in the coming quarters. Third: how manufacturers behave in countries like India, where the question is mass production, not just breakthrough molecules.

For now, we have the list of participants and the topic. The substantive conversation will begin when the speakers' own points are available.