Recursion Pharmaceuticals is laying off a fifth of its workforce in connection with a previously announced streamlining of the AI biotech’s pipeline.
Shrinking the Salt Lake City-based company’s workforce by 20% is set to cost Recursion around $11 million in severance fees and related costs, the company explained in a June 10 Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The biotech entered 2025 with around 800 employees as a result of “rapid headcount growth” tied to its acquisition of Exscientia in 2024, according to Recursion’s most recent annual report.
The company tied the layoffs to its decision last month to clear out a chunk of its pipeline as it narrows its focus on R&D in oncology and rare diseases. This involved deprioritizing three clinical-stage programs in neurofibromatosis type 2, cerebral cavernous malformation and C. difficile infection.
The company also said at the time that it was pausing work on an asset being developed for reversibility and central nervous system penetration in solid tumors, as well as winding down a single preclinical program in an undisclosed target.
Those changes were expected to stretch Recursion’s cash runway into “mid-2027,” and the company reaffirmed today that the layoffs meant the $500 million it should have in the bank by the end of the month will last into 2027.
That pipeline shakeup in May followed Recursion’s acquisition of AI development peer Exscientia late last year.
When Recursion announced the deal in August 2024, the biotech said the combined company would expect to report about 10 clinical readouts over an 18-month span. The combined firm came out of the gate sporting 10 partnered programs with the potential to generate more than $20 billion in milestone payments following potential approvals.
At least one of Recursion's partnerships has generated cash for the biotech so far in 2025, with the biotech reporting in May that Sanofi had paid a $7 million milestone after using Recursion's platform to identify an oral small molecule against a “high-interest immune cell target.”