Novartis took a bigger bite out of a small pie on Thursday in hopes of getting ahead of the competition in the years to come.

Increasingly, larger pharmaceutical companies are finding that they can save time and money by investing in smaller companies who have already done the leg-work on newer technologies. Novartis is no different. The Swiss-based pharmaceutical company increased its share in a lesser-known biopharmaceutical company that specializes in gene therapies called RNAi.

Novartis (nyse: NVS - news - people ) exercised its right to buy 213,888 unregistered shares of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (nasdaq: ALNY - news - people ) at $25.29 per share, or $5.4 million, bringing Novartis' stake in the company up to 13.4%.

Shares of Alnylam were up 1.6%, or 40 cents, to $25.24 in afternoon trading on Thursday. Novartis rose 1.3%, or 66 cents, to $52.18, in New York trading.

In 2005, Novartis previously bought 5.3 million shares of the company at $11.11 per share, or a total of $58.8 million.

Miller Tabak analyst Les Funtleyder speculates that Novartis is trying to stay ahead of the game by investing in a technology that may or may not prove to be valuable in the future.

"It remains to be seen whether or not this technology will work. Novartis is putting down a bet on a technology platform that may have future applications," said Funtleyder. "It behooves the big-cap pharmas to do these kinds of deals because if it turns that these technology have some kind of promise you don’t' want to be left behind."

Novartis could be trying to keep up with Merck (nyse: MRK - news - people ). In 2006, Merck acquired Sirna Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company that specializes in the same sort of gene silencing technology, for $1.1 billion.