When Dimitrios Skaltsas founded Intelligencia AI more than seven years ago, he couldn’t have known just how far ahead of the curve he was. In 2025, just about everyone is using AI in drug development, as Intelligencia AI has been doing for years.
Skaltsas has said he founded Intelligencia AI for the specific purpose of creating positive changes in people’s lives. His’ “aha” moment came in 2016, when he first began to see the full potential of AI when working at McKinsey – especially when it came to pharmaceutical research.
In an industry where it takes 10 to 15 years to bring a drug to market, and 9 out of 10 potential drugs don’t end up panning out, Intelligencia AI was created, in Skaltsas’ words, to give the pharmaceutical industry a better and data-driven chance to find the best candidates to succeed up front. This is especially important in a world where it costs approximately $2.6 billion to bring a new drug to market.
For a company that started small, Intelligencia AI has built its way up. Headquartered in New York City with a Research & Development hub in Skaltsas’ native Greece, it works with more than half of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies, directly and through partnerships.
With Skaltsas at the head of what he calls a “living organism” of a company, he stresses that soft skills, including empathy and teamwork-building savvy, are critical to maintaining a successful, professional culture. As Intelligencia AI continues to grow, and AI helps it push into new frontiers of medicine, its tight-knit team is on its odyssey together.
