Vibe check: BIO 2026

This was my first year attending BIO. JPM is called the “Super Bowl of biotech,” so with delegations from dozens of countries in attendance, you might say BIO is the World Cup. The big question I had going in, like with any other industry event, was “what are the vibes going to be like?” After witnessing some, frankly, bad overall moods at other major events last year, I was struck by how different things felt at BIO 2026. Joining me in San Diego were STAT biotech correspondent Meghana Keshavan, AI reporter Brittany Trang, and DC correspondent Daniel Payne. In this week’s STATus Report, you’ll get vibe checks from some industry executives and my three aforementioned colleagues and hear what difference a year can make. 0:00 Intro 0:49 AI at BIO: Brittany Trang's takeaways 1:11 Lab automation & Nvidia's agent toolkit 1:54 Will humans still have jobs in biotech? 2:26 AI pharma deals & the clinical trial frontier 3:10 Federal policy: Daniel Payne on Washington's impact 4:10 Vibes on the floor: mood, M&A & China's absence 5:50 CEO perspectives: biotech is back 7:52 Outro More from STAT: Become a subscriber: https://www.statnews.com/stat-plus/ Watch Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Statnews Newsletters: https://www.statnews.com/signup/ STAT events: https://www.statnews.com/stat-events/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/statnews Twitter: https://twitter.com/statnews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/status_report_ig/ Flipboard: rb.gy/3xnsxr STAT Reports: https://rb.gy/rexfwj STAT eBooks: https://rb.gy/eme3h5 ABOUT STAT: Founded in 2015, STAT is a global digital media brand that focuses on delivering fast, deep, and tough-minded journalism about the life sciences industries to over six million monthly site visitors and an additional 20 million readers on the Apple News app. STAT takes you inside academic labs, biotech boardrooms, and political backrooms, casting a critical eye on scientific discoveries, scrutinizing corporate strategies, and chronicling the roiling battles for talent, money, and market share. With an award-winning newsroom, STAT provides indispensable insights and exclusive stories on the technologies, personalities, power brokers, and political forces driving massive changes in the life sciences industry — and a revolution in human health.