GSK agrees to buy Nuvalent for $10.6 billion in cash

GSK is paying $10.6 billion in cash for Nuvalent, a Boston-based oncology company with no marketed drugs yet, in a deal that gives the British drugmaker a deeper stake in lung cancer and one of its most ambitious assets bets in years. The acquisition centers on a small cluster of precision therapies that could broaden GSK’s cancer franchise faster than building a pipeline from scratch.

GSK said it will pay $124 a share, about a 40% premium to Nuvalent’s prior close, and will launch a tender offer within 10 business days to buy all outstanding Class A and Class B stock. Nuvalent shares jumped nearly 40% on the news, while GSK finished slightly lower in London, underscoring investor caution even as the company framed the move as a major growth step. The transaction is GSK’s largest acquisition in more than a decade and its biggest purchase in eight years.

What GSK is really buying is time. The package includes two late-stage non-small cell lung cancer drugs, zidesamtinib and neladalkib, both under U.S. Food and Drug Administration review for possible 2026 approvals, along with NVL-330, a phase I HER2 inhibitor, and preclinical programs. Nuvalent’s zidesamtinib filing carries a PDUFA target action date of September 18, 2026, which means the first regulatory decision could arrive within months. If the drugs clear review, patients could begin seeing the effects of the deal as soon as late 2026 and into 2027, first in the lung-cancer setting and then, potentially, through broader development around GSK’s own Ris-Rez antibody-drug conjugate, a B7-H3 ADC.

The science case is straightforward: GSK said the assets are built around validated biological targets and are meant to address efficacy and tolerability gaps left by existing therapies. The strategic case is just as clear. GSK has been trying to reset investor expectations around pipeline strength and long-term growth, while keeping a target of more than £40 billion in annual sales by 2031. The company said the Nuvalent acquisition is expected to be accretive to sales and core operating profit in 2027 and to core earnings per share in 2029.

That makes the deal look both offensive and defensive. It is an aggressive entry into a fiercely competitive oncology market, but it also gives GSK another source of future revenue as pressure builds around its HIV franchise, where exclusivity loss begins in 2028. In that sense, the premium price reflects more than faith in two cancer drugs. It reflects the cost of buying a faster path into one of pharma’s most valuable battlefields.