Sam Fazeli Pharmaceutical and biotech industry analyst who comments on the biotech IPO market, M&A, investor sentiment and drug pricing policy.

“For some relatively basic tasks where I need massive amounts of data gathered and sifted through, it is making a significant difference. I'm finding that I can displace two or three contractors, for instance, in some data gathering, which I can now do. And I still need the human in the loop to finalize the quality of the data.”

Biotech Hangout · Health & Longevity · October 2026

Context

After a debate on AI hype in biotech, Fazeli gives his own first-hand view of AI at work. He says it replaces routine data-gathering labor but not human checking.

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Transcript

Biotech Hangout Around 11:57 into the episode

Speaker 1

…the cusp of phase two. We have one full-time CEO and raising a Series B to build out a small team. So I think this idea of smaller teams is here to stay. And AI is going to facilitate that. But anyway, I would love to hear from the other co-hosts, their thoughts and comments on this whole AI theme.

Graig Suvannavejh

…to make a difference. And I think eventually people are going to have a lot more free time because they are going to be in their self-driving Tesla on the way to work. And it's going to make them a lot more productive. And that's going to free up time. So that's one contribution from AI for sure.

Sam Fazeli

So look, we in my team use AI quite a bit. And I can verify that for some relatively basic tasks where I need massive amounts of data gathered and sifted through, it is making a significant difference. I'm finding that I can displace two or three contractors, for instance, in some data gathering, which I can now do. And I still need the human in the loop to finalize the quality of the data. Etc. That is not going to go away, that last part. But do I need two or three days of people doing something? There's no question. I think every one of us will have that. Big data is absolutely the sweet spot of AI. And the bigger it gets, the harder it gets. Add to this genomic data. GWAS analysis data. So I'm making an effort to try and talk to as many AI-enabled companies, many of which are…

Speaker 1

Yeah. Yeah. And I also think we're still lacking good translational models to be predictive of what will happen in humans. And at the end of the day, especially new targets, you won't know the rubber hits the road with a true clinical study in human subjects, right? And a data readout. It'll be…

Brian Skorney

Yeah, I mean, I was having dinner the other night. We were talking about this. And, you know, a PM I was discussing it with was like, oh, this is definitely the most transformational technology that we've seen in our lifetime. I kind of pushed back and I was like, well, I don't know. I mean, it's…

Speaker 1

Yep. Yep. Greg, any final comments on

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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