Merck inks $1 billion AI drug development deal with Google Cloud

Merck has become the latest pharma giant to ramp up investment in artificial intelligence, announcing yesterday a broad, multiyear partnership with Google Cloud worth up to $1 billion.

Under the agreement, Merck will deploy Google's AI tools across its entire enterprise, from research and development to manufacturing, commercial and corporate functions -- as the company works to strengthen its "digital backbone as an AI-enabled enterprise," according to a joint press release.

The partnership combines Merck's scientific and data expertise with Google Cloud's AI and cloud infrastructure to digitize data to help boost productivity across the drugmaker's 75,000-person global workforce. As part of the collaboration, Google Cloud engineers will work directly alongside Merck staff to support the transition.

Planned applications include using Gemini Enterprise in research workflows, applying predictive analytics and automation in manufacturing, enabling more personalized patient and customer engagement and improving productivity through AI-driven automation.

"AI agents and generative tools will help our teams around the world reimagine processes at scale and bring scientific breakthroughs to patients faster," Dave Williams, Merck's chief information and digital officer, said in a statement.

Williams characterized the deal as the next phase of Merck's AI journey, coming at a time when the company is entering what it calls one of the most significant product launch periods in its history.

Among Merck's early AI investments was the development of its internal large-language model, GPTeal, which the company rolled out last year. Since then, Merck has further invested in AI. In December, the company partnered with NVIDIA to release KERMT, an open-source small-molecule drug discovery model pretrained on over 11 million molecules.

The pact is the latest in a string of AI deals made across the pharmaceutical industry, as drugmakers look to the technology to speed up drug development and cut costs.

In February, Eli Lilly debuted its new NVIDIA-powered AI factory, LillyPod, after announcing plans in January to invest up to $1 billion to build an AI co-innovation lab in California.

Roche is also expanding its global AI infrastructure. The company announced last month that it is extending its partnership with NVIDIA to build what it called the pharmaceutical industry's "largest hybrid-cloud AI factory," aimed at speeding up R&D efforts.

Just last week, Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk announced that it had joined forces with ChatGPT's parent company, OpenAI, to globally integrate AI into its drug discovery process and commercial operations. A day later, AI giant Anthropic appointed Novartis' CEO, Vas Narasimhan, to its board of directors, furthering the company's ties to AI.

Alivia Kaylor is a scientist and the senior site editor of Pharma Life Sciences.