Why causal AI is becoming pharma’s next strategic differentiator — from target validation to clinical trials and real-world evidence. Visualizing the Ladder of Causation in Pharma: from seeing correlations, to doing interventions, to imagining counterfactuals — the foundation of causal AI in drug discovery. Introduction: The Limits of Correlation in Drug Discovery Drug discovery today generates unprecedented volumes of data. Omics, imaging, electronic health records, and real