Eli Lilly and insitro said the deals offers a “new paradigm” for collaborations between major pharmaceutical companies and smaller biotechs.

Insitro has teamed up with Eli Lilly to help power programs into the clinic, tapping the Big Pharma for an option on technology to deliver siRNA molecules it discovered using its machine learning platform.

In a departure from most deals, startup insitro will in-license Lilly’s delivery technology for its investigational liver-targeted siRNA therapies. The pharma will be eligible for milestones and royalties down the line.

Machine-learning drug development company Insitro has inked three agreements with Eli Lilly for new medicines for metabolic diseases.

The latest deal in AI drug discovery is a twist on the usual big pharma-startup collaboration model, with Insitro licensing technology and Lilly eligible for royalties.