Shares of Illumina, Inc. (ILMN) rose 6% on Wednesday afternoon after the biotechnology company announced the launch of a new business called BioInsight to accelerate data-driven drug discovery.  

The new business within the company will focus on developing data assets, software, and artificial intelligence to fuel drug development. It will be led by company veteran Rami Mehio as Senior Vice President and General Manager.

BioInsight will bring together strengths across DNA sequencing, data analysis, software, and AI to help customers identify drug targets, understand biological pathways, and discover novel disease mechanisms, Illumina said.

"BioInsight, under Rami's guidance, will strengthen Illumina's leadership at the intersection of sequencing, software, and AI, with a focus on supporting pharma in drug target discovery and development," said CEO Jacob Thaysen.

The key focus areas of the new business will be working with large national initiatives and industry partners to enable large-scale genetic and biological data generation projects, as well as developing software solutions to analyze multimodal data. It will also focus on developing AI tools through strategic partnerships to build an ecosystem for large-scale multimodal data analysis, in addition to providing platforms to enable private and secure data access for research and pharmaceutical partners.

Mehio noted the dramatic reduction in sequencing costs, coupled with a rise in AI capabilities, is changing how biological insights are derived, and the company is now focused on turning this data into meaningful discoveries.

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around ILMN stock stayed within 'extremely bullish' territory over the past 24 hours, while message volume stayed at 'high' levels.

ILMN stock is down by 24% this year and by approximately 22% over the past 12 months. 

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