Samsung Biologics has launched a $1.8 billion all-cash bid for the Swiss peptide manufacturer PolyPeptide Group. The deal, the largest ever by a South Korean biopharmaceutical company, will expand Samsung’s contract development and manufacturing business beyond biologics into the fast-growing peptide market.
Samsung now focuses largely on producing monoclonal antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates, and other large-molecule therapeutics. Buying PolyPeptide will give it new capability and expertise in peptides, a modality that has surged with the popularity of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) drugs for weight loss and that is being explored in oncology and other disease areas.
“This acquisition reinforces our long-term growth strategy by not only broadening our service portfolio with modality expansion into peptides including GLP-1, but by also boosting our geographic reach and proximity further within the US, Europe, and India,” John Rim, CEO of Samsung Biologics, says in a press release.
Therapeutic peptides occupy a manufacturing middle ground between conventional small-molecule drugs, which are synthesized through organic chemistry, and biologics such as monoclonal antibodies, which are produced in living cells. Peptides are assembled one amino acid at a time using automated solid-phase synthesis, a process that allows precise control over molecular sequence but is technically specialized, relatively slow, and solvent intensive. Because of the unique manufacturing process, peptide production has been historically concentrated at a small number of specialized contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs).
PolyPeptide’s production network includes sites in California, France, Sweden, and India. In 2025, the company recorded $444 million in revenue, an increase of 15.6% over the prior year, driven largely by metabolic therapeutics such as GLP-1 drugs. The company also added a large, new solid-phase peptide synthesis facility in Belgium. For 2026, it expects further revenue growth of 20–25%.
Rodney Lax, a former business development manager at PolyPeptide, writes in an email to C&EN that the deal’s long-term value will depend on Samsung’s integration strategy. The company could use PolyPeptide to build large-scale manufacturing platforms for GLP-1-like analogs, build on PolyPeptide’s existing global sites, or keep the company largely independent.
Expansion into new modalities is not always fruitful for CDMOs, he notes, pointing to Lonza’s acquisition of the peptide manufacturer UCB Bioproducts in 2006. The once-successful peptide business, Lax says, lost prominence within the larger organization, “withering and failing” before PolyPeptide acquired it a decade later.
Samsung’s deal for PolyPeptide reflects growing interest and broader investment across the peptide manufacturing sector. On Tuesday, another Swiss CDMO, Bachem, announced plans to invest more than $615 million in a new large-scale peptide production site in Switzerland that will be supported by a long-term customer supply agreement. Commercial production is slated for 2030.
