The Insilico-Lilly collaboration landed differently than previous AI-pharma deals because its financial structure encoded skepticism rather than suppressing it. A $115 million upfront payment attached to milestone-contingent terms — with the total collaboration potentially reaching $2.75 billion — means Lilly is betting on progress, not on a platform narrative. That distinction is what gave the deal credibility in communities that had spent months cataloging AI healthcare failures. The optimism that followed was not naive; it was conditional in the same way the deal itself is conditional.