Signal AI agents in early drug discovery raised wet lab capacity 21 to 30 percent at one company

Summary

McKinsey offers a pharmaceutical example of agentic AI serving innovation rather than only efficiency. At one drug company, AI agents were woven into research and early drug discovery workflows. The result was a gain of 21 to 30 percent in wet lab capacity, meaning the physical laboratory could handle substantially more experimental work. That extra capacity helped candidate drugs move toward clinical trials more quickly. The report uses the case to argue that agents create room to test, learn, and scale ideas that were previously out of reach.