Goldman-backed Ajax Therapeutics agrees to Eli Lilly sale worth up to $2.3 billion

Goldman Sachs Alternatives is cashing out of Ajax Therapeutics in a sale to Eli Lilly worth up to $2.3 billion, a clean proof point for the firm’s life-sciences push and a reminder that specialized private investing can still produce a visible, strategic win. The deal pairs an upfront payment with milestone-based payouts tied to clinical and regulatory progress, the kind of structure that matters in biotech because value depends on both today’s asset and tomorrow’s data.

For Goldman employees in alternatives, growth equity and life sciences investing, the transaction shows how the platform can turn scientific underwriting and patient capital into an exit, not just a mark on a quarterly slide. Goldman led Ajax’s $95 million Series C financing in 2024 and has sat on the company’s board since then. Lilly was already in that round as an investor before deciding to buy the company outright, which underscores how venture money and strategic capital can converge around a single oncology program.

Ajax was founded in 2019 by Dr. Ross Levine and other scientists focused on myeloproliferative neoplasms. Levine is now chief scientific officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the company has built its thesis around AJ1-11095, a first-in-class Type II JAK2 inhibitor. That asset was being tested in Phase 1 in a study called AJX-101 in patients with myelofibrosis who had previously been treated with a Type I JAK2 inhibitor, with that trial starting in October 2024.

The sale also speaks to the broader market for healthcare exits. Lilly said the Ajax acquisition fits its blood-cancer strategy and that it expected proof-of-concept clinical data later in 2026, while planning to advance AJ1-11095 toward registrational trials. Lilly has also argued that the program’s distinct Type II JAK2 binding mechanism could offer deeper and more durable disease control in myelofibrosis and polycythemia vera than current therapies.

Ajax is headquartered in New York City and has operations in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which fits the increasingly specialized geography of biotech investing: science in one cluster, capital in another, and strategic buyers watching both closely. For Goldman, the outcome is more than a successful trade. It is evidence that the alternatives franchise can identify complex assets early, support them through a capital-intensive buildout, and still convert that work into a transaction that clients and employees can actually see.