XML 28 R16.htm IDEA: XBRL DOCUMENT v3.25.3
Collaborative Development Contracts
9 Months Ended
Sep. 30, 2025
Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]  
Collaborative Development Contracts Collaborative Development Contracts
Sanofi

Description
In January 2022, the Company and Sanofi entered into a collaboration agreement to develop an AI-driven pipeline of precision-engineered medicines. The research is focused on up to 15 novel small molecule candidates across oncology and immunology and utilizes the Company’s AI platform. The Company is leading small molecule drug design and lead optimization activities with Sanofi assuming responsibility for preclinical and clinical development, manufacturing and commercialization.

Pricing
The Company received a $100.0 million non-refundable upfront payment. In April 2025, Recursion received a $7.0 million payment related to the achievement of a milestone for one of the performance obligations. The Company has also received multiple other milestone payments related to this agreement totaling approximately $30.0 million. These related to the advancement of several of the discovery programs within the collaboration and the addition of an existing Company program into the collaboration. Recursion is eligible for additional milestone payments based on performance progress of the collaboration and tiered royalties ranging from high-single-digits to mid-teens. Recursion could earn a maximum of $555.0 million from all research milestones and $1.8 billion from all development and regulatory milestones.

Accounting
In November 2024, Recursion acquired Exscientia as part of an acquisition. See Note 4, “Acquisitions” for additional information. As such, the initial Recursion accounting analysis for this transaction was done as of the business combination date as if Recursion had originated the contract. This agreement represents a transaction with a customer and therefore is accounted for in accordance with ASC 606. Recursion has determined that it has at least eight performance obligations related to the small molecule projects. These performance obligations are for performing research and development services for Sanofi to design small molecules and perform lead optimization activities. The performance obligations also include potential licenses related to the intellectual property. The Company concluded that licenses within the contract are not distinct from the research and development services as they are interrelated due to the fact that the research and development services significantly impact the potential licenses. Any additional services are considered customer options and will be considered as separate contracts for accounting purposes.

The Company has determined the transaction price to be $152.9 million, for the initial performance obligations, comprised of the upfront payment, several milestones that have been achieved and estimated additional target exercises. Prior to the three months ended June 30, 2025, Recursion had fully constrained the $7.0 million variable consideration milestone. Recursion is now recognizing the milestone as part of the transaction price over the completion period for the related performance obligation. Recursion has fully constrained the amounts of remaining variable consideration to be received from potential milestones considering the stage of development and the risks associated with the remaining development required to achieve each milestone. Recursion will re-evaluate the transaction price each reporting period.

The transaction price was generally allocated to the performance obligations based on the estimated relative stand-alone selling price of each performance obligation as determined using an expected cost plus margin approach. The milestone fees were allocated to related performance obligation as the terms of the variable consideration related specifically to Recursion’s efforts to satisfy the related performance obligation. The Company recognizes revenue over time based on costs incurred relative to total expected costs to perform the research and development services. Recursion determined that this method provides a faithful depiction of the transfer of control to the
customer. This method of recognizing revenue requires the Company to make estimates of total costs to provide the services required under the performance obligations. Significant inputs used to determine the total costs included the number of projects to be performed, the number of substitutions related to those projects, length of time required, service hours performed by Company employees and materials costs. A significant change in these estimates could have a material effect on the timing and amount of revenue recognized in future periods. Recursion is unable to estimate the completion date of the performance obligations due to the current stage of work.

Merck KGaA (Merck)

Description
In September 2023, the Company and Merck entered into a collaboration agreement to discover novel small molecule drug candidates across oncology, neuroinflammation and immunology. The collaboration utilizes the Company’s AI platform and the Company is performing drug design and discovery while Merck will be assuming responsibility for the preclinical and clinical development.

Pricing
The Company received a $20.1 million non-refundable upfront payment. Recursion is eligible for additional milestone payments based on performance progress of the collaboration and tiered royalties from the mid-single-digits to low-double-digits. The Company could earn a maximum of $73.0 million for discovery, development and sales milestones per project.

Accounting
In November 2024, Recursion acquired Exscientia as part of an acquisition. See Note 4, “Acquisitions” for additional information. As such, the initial Recursion accounting analysis for this transaction was done as of the business combination date as if Recursion had originated the contract. This agreement represents a transaction with a customer and therefore is accounted for in accordance with ASC 606. Recursion has determined that it has three performance obligations related to each project in the partnership. These performance obligations are for performing research and development services for Merck to design small molecules and perform lead optimization activities. The performance obligations also include potential licenses related to the intellectual property. The Company concluded that licenses within the contract are not distinct from the research and development services as they are interrelated due to the fact that the research and development services significantly impact the potential licenses. Any additional services are considered customer options and will be considered as separate contracts for accounting purposes.

The Company has determined the transaction price to be $20.1 million, for the initial performance obligations, comprised of the upfront payment. Recursion will fully constrain the amounts of remaining variable consideration to be received from potential milestones considering the stage of development and the risks associated with the remaining development required to achieve each milestone. Recursion will re-evaluate the transaction price each reporting period.

The transaction price was allocated to the performance obligations based on the estimated relative stand-alone selling price of each performance obligation as determined using an expected cost plus margin approach. The Company recognizes revenue over time based on costs incurred relative to total expected costs to perform the research and development services. Recursion determined that this method provides a faithful depiction of the transfer of control to the customer. This method of recognizing revenue requires the Company to make estimates of total costs to provide the services required under the performance obligations. Significant inputs used to determine the total costs included the number of projects to be performed, the number of substitutions related to those projects, length of time required, service hours performed by Company employees and materials costs. A significant change in these estimates could have a material effect on the timing and amount of revenue recognized in future periods. Recursion was unable to estimate the completion date of the performance obligations due to the current stage of work.

Roche and Genentech

Description
In December 2021, Recursion entered into a collaboration and license agreement with Roche and Genentech (collectively referred to as Roche). Recursion is constructing, using the Company’s imaging technology and proprietary machine-learning algorithms, unique maps of the inferred relationships amongst perturbation
phenotypes in a given cellular context with the goal to discover and develop therapeutic small molecule programs in a gastrointestinal cancer indication and in key areas of neuroscience. Roche and Recursion will collaborate to select certain novel inferences with respect to small molecules or targets generated from the Phenomaps for further validation and optimization as collaboration programs. Roche and Recursion may also combine sequencing datasets from Roche with Recursion’s Phenomaps and collaborate to generate new algorithms to produce multi-modal maps from which additional collaboration programs may be initiated. For every collaboration program that successfully identifies potential therapeutic small molecules or validates a target, Roche will have an option to obtain an exclusive license to develop and commercialize such potential therapeutic small molecules or to exploit such target in the applicable exclusive field.

Pricing
In January 2022, Recursion received a $150.0 million non-refundable upfront payment from the Company’s collaboration with Roche. In September 2024, Recursion received a $30.0 million milestone payment (the “acceptance fee”), which was an acceptance fee related to the first accepted neuroscience Phenomap. Recursion is eligible for additional milestone payments based on performance progress of the collaboration. Each of the Phenomaps requested by Roche and created by Recursion may be subject to either an initiation fee, acceptance fee or both. Such fees could exceed $250.0 million for 16 accepted Phenomaps. In addition, for a period of time after Roche’s acceptance of certain Phenomaps, Roche will have the option to obtain, subject to payment of an exercise fee, rights to use outside the collaboration the raw images generated in the course of creating those Phenomaps. If Roche exercises its external use option for all 12 eligible Phenomaps, Roche’s associated exercise fee payments to Recursion could exceed $250.0 million. Under the collaboration, Roche may initiate up to 40 programs, each of which, if successfully developed and commercialized, could yield more than $300.0 million in development, commercialization and net revenue milestones for Recursion, as well as tiered royalties on net revenue.

Accounting
This agreement represents a transaction with a customer and therefore is accounted for in accordance with ASC 606. Recursion has determined that it has three performance obligations, one related to gastrointestinal cancer and two in neuroscience. These performance obligations are for performing research and development services for Roche to identify targets and medicines. The performance obligations also include potential licenses related to the intellectual property. The Company concluded that licenses within the contract are not distinct from the research and development services as they are interrelated due to the fact that the research and development services significantly impact the potential licenses. Any additional services are considered customer options and will be considered as separate contracts for accounting purposes.

The Company has determined the transaction price to be $180.0 million, comprised of the upfront payment and the acceptance fee. Prior to the three months ended September 30, 2024, Recursion had fully constrained the $30.0 million variable consideration acceptance fee. As a result of Roche’s acceptance of the neuroscience Phenomap, Recursion is now recognizing the acceptance fee as part of the transaction price over the completion period of one of the neuroscience performance obligations. Recursion has fully constrained the remaining amounts of variable consideration to be received from potential milestones considering the stage of development and the risks associated with the remaining development required to achieve each milestone. Recursion will re-evaluate the transaction price each reporting period.

The transaction price was generally allocated to the performance obligations based on the estimated relative stand-alone selling price of each performance obligation as determined using an expected cost plus margin approach. The acceptance fee was allocated to one of the neuroscience performance obligations as the terms of the variable consideration related specifically to Recursion’s efforts to satisfy this performance obligation. The Company recognizes revenue over time based on costs incurred relative to total expected costs to perform the research and development services. Recursion determined that this method provides a faithful depiction of the transfer of control to the customer. This method of recognizing revenue requires the Company to make estimates of total costs to provide the services required under the performance obligations. Significant inputs used to determine the total costs included the length of time required, service hours performed by Company employees and materials costs. A significant change in these estimates could have a material effect on the timing and amount of revenue recognized in future periods. Recursion has estimated the completion of the performance obligations by 2026.
Additional Revenue Disclosures

Of the revenue recognized during the three and nine months ended September 30, 2025, $4.5 million and $36.6 million was included in the unearned revenue balance as of December 31, 2024, respectively. Of the revenue recognized during the three and nine months ended September 30, 2024, $4.1 million and $29.0 million was included in the unearned revenue balance as of December 31, 2023, respectively. Revenue recognized was from the upfront and variable consideration payments received from the related contracts, which decreased the aggregate unearned revenue recognized. As of September 30, 2025, the Company had $5.6 million of costs incurred to fulfill a contract on its Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheet within “Other Current Assets.”
Unearned revenue was classified as short-term and long-term on the Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets based on the Company’s estimate of revenue that will be recognized during the next twelve months.