By Salem Chicago News Staff
CHICAGO — Tempus AI announced Sunday it has extended its data licensing agreement with Recursion Pharmaceuticals through November 2029 and entered a separate deal to license Recursion’s RNA foundation model for oncology applications.
The two agreements deepen a collaboration first established in 2023 between the Chicago-based biotech firm and Salt Lake City-based Recursion.
Amended Financial Terms
Under the amended terms, the companies replaced discretionary license fees that could have totaled $84 million over the next two years with committed payments totaling $42 million over three years. Tempus will pay Recursion $14 million annually on each of the third, fourth and fifth anniversaries of the original agreement’s effective date.
In a separate agreement, Recursion granted Tempus a non-exclusive, worldwide license to its proprietary RNA sequencing model, known as TxFM, for use in oncology. Tempus will pay a $12 million non-refundable license fee in two $6 million installments over two years, according to an 8-K filing Recursion submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Sunday.
“We are thrilled to extend our collaboration with Recursion beyond the initial committed period, demonstrating the ongoing value of this partnership,” Ryan Fukushima, CEO of Data and Apps at Tempus, said. “We look forward to continuing our work together to use emerging technologies to bring better therapeutics to patients.”
About the Companies
Tempus, headquartered in Chicago and traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker TEM, uses artificial intelligence and one of the world’s largest libraries of clinical and molecular data to advance precision medicine. The company reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $382.49 million, a 21.6 percent year-over-year increase, and swung to positive net income.
Recursion, traded under the ticker RXRX, specializes in AI-driven drug discovery using large-scale biological datasets. The company held approximately $545.7 million in cash as of its most recent quarterly report.
The partnership combines Tempus’s multimodal patient data — encompassing genomics, transcriptomics and clinical outcomes — with Recursion’s experimental platform, which can perturb biology gene by gene under controlled laboratory conditions. The companies described the approach as enabling a shift “from correlation to causation” in identifying drug targets.
RNA Model Expands the Relationship
The RNA model license expands the relationship beyond data sharing into specific model-driven applications. TxFM enables Tempus to use RNA sequencing capabilities for diagnostic applications, clinical applications and internal research and development within oncology.
Tempus is connected to approximately 50 percent of U.S. academic medical centers and oncologists, according to the company’s investor relations materials.
The agreements were executed Sept. 15, with full terms to be disclosed in Recursion’s next quarterly filing with the SEC.
