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What podcasters are saying about Pharma & biotech
Summary
In the past 30 days, 19 speakers on 14 finance podcasts discussed Pharma & biotech in 24 views. Chorus has followed Pharma & biotech since October 2, 2026.
Who talks about it most
- Citrini · 4
- Jack Altman · 2
- Martin Shkreli · 2
- Jason Snipe · 1
- Steve Weiss · 1
- Kai Wu · 1
- Ev Randle · 1
- Mark Cuban · 1
- Bill Ackman · 1
- Jim Cramer · 1
The latest views
Newest first. Every quote is checked against the episode's transcript.
Jason Snipe · Odyssey Capital Advisors
Biotech has more upside: up 29% year to date, M&A is picking up, and he likes the trade going forward.
Snipes says biotech is up 29% year to date. The main worry for investors is that rising yields and interest rates raise the cost of care and weigh on the sector. He counters that M&A is starting to pick up in the space, so he sees continued momentum in the trade and likes it going forward.
“So I think there is continued juice in this trade, and I like this one going forward.”at 28:17
CNBC Halftime Report: Amazon in Focus as the Nasdaq Slides 10/3026 ·
Steve Weiss · Short Hills Capital Partners
AI can let drug companies skip phase one and two trials, cutting time and cost, which is positive for biotech.
Weiss says AI will let drug companies skip phase one and phase two trials and go straight to phase three human trials. That speeds time to market and produces large cost savings, since early trial phases are expensive. He calls it a positive for the IBB and biotech overall, and says investors are finding growth in biotech because they can't find it in some AI trades.
“with AI, you'll be able to help drug companies on their trials skip phase one and phase two, and perhaps just go to phase three human trials. So the speed to [market] will be greater.”at 29:19
CNBC Halftime Report: Amazon in Focus as the Nasdaq Slides 10/3026 ·
Kai Wu · Sparkline Capital
Healthcare, as an information-intensive sector that has lagged, looks like an unpriced AI beneficiary.
Healthcare is one of the most information-intensive industries in the world. As a category it has underperformed over the past ten years despite long-term outperformance. Kai argues that if anything has AI upside that is not priced in, healthcare is an interesting place to look. He notes this is the thesis behind Cathie Wood's roughly 30% healthcare weight in ARKK, which is mostly biotech, life sciences and medtech.
“Health care is one of the most information intensive industries in the world. As a category, has actually underperformed in the past ten years despite having long term outperformance. If there's anything that has AI upside yet is not priced, health care as a category seems like an interesting place to look.”at 47:21
Excess Returns: The S&P 500 Is Just 50 Stocks. The Nasdaq Is a 67% AI Bet. Kai Wu on What Else Is Hiding in Your Funds ·
Jack Altman · Benchmark
AI for biology is likely to work; early signs show target identification now possible that wasn't before.
Jack says the smartest people at the labs believe AI for biology will work. Early indications show that target identification and other tasks are now possible when they were not before. He cites this as one of the areas where the next big bet is forming, alongside robotics. The evidence is anecdotal.
“the smartest people at the lab seem to be saying it's going to work. There seems to be early indications that target identification and other things are possible that didn't used to be.”at 23:41
Uncapped with Jack Altman: Benchmark Breakfast #1 | Jack and Ev ·
Jack Altman · Benchmark
AI-driven bio could be among the best outcomes, as labs build teams and buy data for it.
Jack argues software improvements have a ceiling because the world's biggest gains are physical: housing, longevity, health, food and transport. Bio would be one of the best outcomes if AI finds drug targets and new drugs quickly. He points to labs talking publicly about bio, building teams around it and buying large amounts of data as evidence it is on the horizon. He calls bio and robotics the two areas where this is most visible.
“bio, to me, would be one of the very best possible things if we're discovering drug targets and finding amazing new drugs quickly.”at 48:31
Uncapped with Jack Altman: Benchmark Breakfast #1 | Jack and Ev ·
Ev Randle · Benchmark
AI-driven bio progress will likely have a much larger impact than other AI gains.
Ev uses his father's cancer as an example. Recent immunotherapy drugs gave him a ten-plus-year prognosis and put him in remission, where a diagnosis twelve years earlier would have been fatal. He argues we are only at the start of perhaps one hundred to one thousand times that much progress across every disease area. Once AI helps solve biology, with the investment that will require, the impact should be much larger than from the other AI applications so far. The argument is partly personal but grounded in the survival-rate shift and the scale of the opportunity.
“And we are just at the start of probably one hundred to one thousand times that amount of things happening, it's like every single disease area, every single cancer.”at 54:24
Uncapped with Jack Altman: Benchmark Breakfast #1 | Jack and Ev ·
Mark Cuban · Cost Plus Drugs
AI models will make personalized drugs cheap, starting with over-the-counter medicines and then prescriptions.
Cuban argues the cost of designing a drug personalized to a patient's DNA will approach zero as model capabilities rise, and that algorithmic efficiency gains, not just GPUs, will drive this. He gives no fixed timeline, saying it could take five, ten or twenty years. He expects it to start with over-the-counter drugs like Advil, Tylenol and ibuprofen, where everyone currently takes the same dose and must experiment to learn how it affects them. Personalized prescriptions such as choosing between Eliquis, Xarelto and warfarin would follow. He expects initial costs to be enormous but to fall until personalized medicine becomes part of a normal subscription, similar to how DNA testing fell to about $99.
“The cost of designing a drug personalized to you after reviewing your DNA and knowing everything that it knows will start approaching zero as the capabilities of models go up.”at 36:44
a16z Podcast: Mark Cuban’s Plan to Make Healthcare Affordable ·
Bill Ackman · Pershing Square Capital Management
AI will let brain-computer interfaces restore sight and walking within years, not months.
Ackman has met many brain-computer interface companies, Neuralink being the best known, and sees promising lower-intervention technologies. He argues AI will let us extract more signal from the brain and interpret it far more effectively than before. He expects this to restore vision to the blind and walking to paraplegics. He frames the timeline as a matter of years, though not too many years. He also cites the neglect of brain rehabilitation research, where many neurologists doubt they can help patients, as the reason he is funding a new institute.
“AI is gonna enable us. We're gonna be able to get more signal from the brain... the blind will see again... paraplegics, I believe, will walk again. And... It's a matter of not months, but years, but not too many years.”at 42:28
In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen: Bill Ackman: Concentrated Investing, Permanent Capital, and the Value of Being Challenged ·
Jim Cramer · CNBC
Biotechs are being taken over aggressively, making biotech stocks attractive speculative positions.
Cramer says biotech companies are being bought out 'like mad' and that this makes biotech a good place to speculate. He points to ImmunityBio as a speculative pick, though he gives little company-specific evidence. The core argument is the takeover wave across the sector.
“That is a situation that's a very good step... The biotechs are being taken over like mad you wanna be in one.”at 40:50
Mad Money with Jim Cramer: Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 10/26/26 ·
Joe Terranova · Virtus Investment Partners
Large-cap pharma is working well, and tech benefits should lift their revenue growth over several quarters.
Terranova says large-cap pharma is working incredibly well, citing Pfizer's 52-week high, Gilead, AbbVie and Amgen, with Eli Lilly reporting Thursday. He thinks the market sees health care as a defensive play, but he argues technology is beginning to benefit these large companies, and revenue acceleration will come in the next several quarters.
“Large cap pharma, which Amgen is obviously part of, is working incredibly well. ... I also think that we're seeing technology beginning to benefit a lot of these large cap health care companies, and the revenue acceleration is only gonna come forward here in the next several quarters.”at 40:24
CNBC Halftime Report: The Investment Committee Prepares for a Pivotal Week 10/26/26 ·
Alexander Hardy · BioMarin Pharmaceutical
The new FDA rare-disease framework is flexible, consistent and predictable, a welcome change for the sector.
Hardy calls the FDA's newly issued rare-disease guidance really exciting. He says the rare-disease community has long needed a special approach because of small patient populations and diseases that have never had treatments. The framework brings flexibility, consistency and predictability, and systematically brings the patient voice into the process, including the earliest stages. He says this is a good time for rare diseases.
“I think the FDA guidance that was just issued is really exciting... With this FDA framework, we see flexibility. We also see consistency and predictability.”at 25:52
Squawk Pod (CNBC Squawk Box): Brazil & Europe, Elon Musk & Neocloud “Guppies” 102626 ·
Nate Thooft · Manulife Investment Management
Healthcare is underappreciated, with AI set to deliver diagnostic and personalized drug gains; Manulife is leaning in.
The market has hated healthcare, and the sector has been trading near all-time highs but recently shows signs of life. Thooft thinks investors are starting to realize there are large potential AI benefits within healthcare. Manulife favors companies that use AI to deliver more accurate, efficient diagnostics and to build more personalized drugs.
“I think healthcare is woefully underappreciated because one, the market has hated it.”at 13:35
Bloomberg Surveillance: Market Uncertainty Ahead of the Midterms ·
Citrini
AI compressed months of drug design work into days, but wet-lab synthesis and testing still take months.
Citrini's team used Claude to design antivenom mini-binders for scorpion toxin. In about 64 hours, with roughly 308 sub-agents, it generated 180 designs, and the team sent 211 designs to the labs. Seventeen bound the target, and the best candidate, CN2B1, bound in both labs and competed with a known neutralizing antibody at the intended site. The neutralization test was not run. The AI compressed what would have been months of scientist work into days. But synthesis, testing, and getting controls still took months, and the wet-lab step took 39 days. Growing cells in a dish runs at the speed of life, so physical experiments remain the bottleneck.
“the AI kind of compressed what would be months of work for scientists into days. ... But the synthesis, the testing, getting the controls, that still took months.”at 38:51
Monetary Matters: Citrini: Monkeys Are The Next Bottleneck | Citrini on AI Drug Discovery Experiment & Reflexive Financing Risk to AI Buildout & Hardware Trade ·
Citrini
Investment thesis: be long experiments, especially tools and CROs that speed up wet-lab work.
The team's central investment conclusion from the experiment is to be long experiments, meaning anything that makes experiments faster. The idea is that AI shrinks the idea-to-experiment cycle dramatically, while physical experiments remain the slow step. Citrini frames this as a cyclical recovery trade: life sciences tools and CROs, which were bought at cyclical trough pricing after the COVID-era overbuild, were starting to tick up despite rising rates. Drug development is long-duration and tends to be correlated with rates, which makes the signal notable. He hints at a secular component too, comparing it to the early AI infrastructure trade in 2022-2023.
“our central conclusion as far as investment thesis go, which is we really want to be long experiments, right? And anything that can make experiments...”at 39:52
Monetary Matters: Citrini: Monkeys Are The Next Bottleneck | Citrini on AI Drug Discovery Experiment & Reflexive Financing Risk to AI Buildout & Hardware Trade ·
Citrini
AI is commoditizing drug design, so the value of early-stage and preclinical biotech assets will fall.
Citrini says drug design, at least in causal biology, is largely solved by AI, including AlphaFold and specialist tools, and will commoditize further. Drug candidates in preclinical testing have risen sharply, while the number of FDA-approved molecules has been flat for five years. Citrini estimates AI can reduce only about 20% of the drug-design-to-clinical-trial process, with 80% irreducible, so AI will not speed the full pipeline much. The value of a preclinical or early clinical asset will probably fall over time. Differentiated companies with real causal biology insight or a new druggable target should keep value. Me-too companies with a single asset in a well-understood mechanism will struggle.
“Drug design is pretty much, at least in causal biology, it's pretty solved.”at 45:09
Monetary Matters: Citrini: Monkeys Are The Next Bottleneck | Citrini on AI Drug Discovery Experiment & Reflexive Financing Risk to AI Buildout & Hardware Trade ·
Citrini
The US has fallen behind China and Australia on phase one trial speed; US pilots aim to close the gap.
Citrini cites the time to complete a phase one study, where the US has fallen significantly behind China and Australia. In response, the FDA and HHS have launched pilot programs to cut early-stage development time so US phase one trials are more competitive globally. Citrini notes an expedited IND pilot program, called Operation Trailblazer, whose application closes at the end of the month, so it is still early. The point is that these efforts are an action to speed trials, not a proven outcome.
“The US has fallen significantly behind China and Australia, interestingly enough, in like the time it takes to complete a phase one study.”at 1:06:27
Monetary Matters: Citrini: Monkeys Are The Next Bottleneck | Citrini on AI Drug Discovery Experiment & Reflexive Financing Risk to AI Buildout & Hardware Trade ·
Ohsung Kwon · Wells Fargo
Pharma and biotech sentiment is extremely bullish and has flashed a sell signal, so the group looks stretched.
Kwon says pharma, biotech and life science have benefited from outflows from semiconductors. His sentiment indicator has triggered a sell signal for the group, which means it has become extremely bullish. He notes that this is not a good signal for the group, so he prefers the health care services side.
“pharma, biotech, and life science, that group has triggered a sell signal, meaning it's gotten pretty extremely bullish, so that's not necessarily a good signal”at 35:07
CNBC Power Lunch: Oil Hits 5-Month High, iPhone Duo Launch, Weekend Sports Slate 10/23/26 ·
Rob Sechan · NewEdge Wealth
Healthcare is an overweight that benefits from drug trends and from AI superintelligence usage.
Rob's fund is overweight health care, which he calls an enormous beneficiary of secular drug trends. He also expects a forward benefit from the use of superintelligence. Health care is one of the places he has rotated to from AI infrastructure after strong early-year performance, and he still likes names like AbbVie.
“Overweight sector. I think it's an enormous beneficiary of a lot of secular trends in drugs, obviously, but there's also the forward benefit that I think we're gonna see from the usage of superintelligence.”at 36:30
CNBC Halftime Report: The AI Race Deepens as Access to Capital Shrinks: Your Next Move 10/22/26 ·
Malcolm Ethridge · Capital Area Planning Group
Healthcare is one of the most obvious places where AI deployment will start to make waves.
Malcolm is warming up to health care after hearing CEOs talk about how AI is speeding up data use and generating growth. He thinks the sector is one of the most obvious places where AI deployment starts to show results, which bodes well for many of its names.
“I think it bodes well for a lot of the names in the sector. ... I think it's one of the most obvious places that the deployment phase of AI starts to actually make waves.”at 37:38
CNBC Halftime Report: The AI Race Deepens as Access to Capital Shrinks: Your Next Move 10/22/26 ·
Ramona Persaud · Fidelity Investments
Pharma stocks are cheap because the market doubts their pipelines, which creates a buying opportunity.
Persaud says the market is skeptical of pharma pipelines right now, and she calls it one of the clearest examples of the apathy she looks for. In her example, a large drugmaker lost exclusivity on a major drug. The market fixates on that loss and does not believe the rest of the portfolio can outgrow it. That leaves the stock much cheaper and higher-yielding than the market, with less volatility. She sees the same setup in many pharma companies, supported by strong research.
“An example right now is in pharma. There's a lot of skepticism over their pipelines.”at 10:01
Fidelity Viewpoints: 10.20.26 - How to spot hidden value stock opportunities ·
Jeff deGraaf · Renaissance Macro Research
Healthcare is a natural hedge to tech and is absorbing AI benefits; pharma and biotech look strong.
Healthcare tends to catch a bid when tech sells off, which makes it the yin to tech's yang. He says the sector is ingesting AI benefits and will drop some of them to the bottom line. Pharma and biotech, including life sciences, have produced potentially groundbreaking developments that are not yet household names. Their momentum is strong, and the recent negative volatility alerts look like buying opportunities, because these names are not yet widely owned.
“healthcare usually catches a bid. And I think healthcare is one of these areas that actually is ingesting the benefits AI and seeing that and, you know, going to be able to drop some of that to the bottom line”at 30:23
On The Tape with Danny Moses: Jeff deGraaf: Erase Chips From Your Memory ·
Martin Shkreli · Q/C Technologies
Big Pharma sells drug assets far below their worth, so buyers of molecules capture large alpha.
The market for molecules is inefficient. He bought a drug from Bristol Myers for $2 million, and that company is now worth $6 billion. Pfizer would sell drug rights for a million dollars when they were worth a billion, because it did not care. The bottleneck was vetting assets, which he tackled with an NLP company that tried to read all 40 million medical papers. His strategy of buying and developing undervalued molecules is the source of the alpha he describes.
“Pfizer would sell you a drug for a million bucks that was worth a billion dollars. They didn't care.”at 9:09
All-In Podcast: Martin Shkreli: Big Pharma's Blind Spot, Betting Against Quantum & What Prison Taught Him ·
Martin Shkreli · Q/C Technologies
AI won't meaningfully help drug discovery; he sees no AI-relevant drug in the next ten years.
He has built drugs and gotten an FDA approval himself, and says it is hard to do. Computers have been used in drug discovery for decades; he built a Cray cluster to analyse drugs years ago. He disputes Dario's claim that AI would cure all diseases and says AI does not help drug discovery in any meaningful way. He is confident that no AI-relevant drug will arrive in the next ten years.
“He also said that we'd cure all diseases. I don't think there'll be a single AI relevant drug in the next ten years. ... AI does not help drug discovery.”at 16:05
All-In Podcast: Martin Shkreli: Big Pharma's Blind Spot, Betting Against Quantum & What Prison Taught Him ·
Ed Elson · Prof G Media
AI in biotech and medical discovery, such as protein design for unsolved diseases, is the most exciting application, though distant.
He is most excited about AI in biotech and medical discovery: startups use frontier LLMs to design complex proteins that could address diseases not yet solved. He caveats that this is far into the future.
“Something I am excited about where I think that AI could make a difference is in biotech and medical discovery... startups are using the power of those frontier LLMs, and they're using it to figure out how to create complex proteins that can solve diseases that we haven't been able to solve yet.”at 1:00:00
The Compound and Friends: Is Gen Z Completely Cooked? With Ed Elson ·
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