How Tech Giants like NVIDIA, Google, and Microsoft Are Targeting New Niches in Biopharma R&D
Tech giants are becoming part of biopharma’s infrastructure, applying AI, data, and cloud to drug discovery as they seek footholds in new markets
Large technology companies aren’t newcomers to biopharma and healthcare, but now there’s less theater around “disruption” and more attention to infrastructure: compute, data pipelines, modeling capacity, and the task of fusing systems together. The running theme is scale, defensibility, and sometimes, salvage.
In July, Deloitte released a report Trends Shaping Biopharma in 2025, highlighting two big changes.
The first is that data and AI have become the new competitive advantage. With healthcare data growing rapidly and AI tools advancing, pharma companies can no longer just react to patient needs. They must predict them, provide proactive support, and design personalized treatments. Many firms are already bringing patient services in-house, and more than half of industry leaders admit their business models need to be updated.
The second change is the rise of smarter supply chains and manufacturing. Geopolitical risks and supply chain disruptions are pushing companies to adapt, and technologies like digital supply networks, cloud platforms, digital twins, and advanced analytics are starting to reshape how drugs are produced—making the process faster, leaner, and more resilient.
In this article: Alphabet/Google — Amazon — Apple — Microsoft — NVIDIA — Meta — Intel — IBM — Samsung — Oracle — Big Tech, Biopharma and Society
Tech companies, with their infrastructure, data power, and global reach are well positioned for the transformation biopharma needs. What draws them to healthcare is data. Biopharma holds one of the richest but least used data resources—genomic sequences, clinical trial results, real-world evidence, and patient feedback. Combined with AI and machine learning, this data could fuel breakthroughs in drug discovery, diagnosis, prognosis, and personalized medicine.
And tech giants started investing into biopharma a while ago. Amazon’s $3.9B acquisition of One Medical in 2023 signaled its healthcare ambitions. In July 2025, the White House’s “Make Health Tech Great Again” event highlighted the process: more than 60 healthcare and technology players — including Apple, Amazon, Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI — pledged to build a next-generation digital health ecosystem. Networks committed to CMS interoperability standards, health systems promised to ease patient data use, and EHR vendors vowed to streamline exchange.
All the signs indicate tech giants are here for a while, so let’s look at the key steps notable players have taken in biopharma this year.
Alphabet/Google
A recent InvestorsObserver analysis of Alphabet’s 13F equity positions suggests ~40% are in healthcare/biotech, which makes the company one of the most active investors in U.S. healthcare. The company strives for global AI leadership, considering healthcare and biotech as one of the major fields to fulfil this goal.
In March 2025 Google introduced TxGemma, a suite of “open” AI models aimed at advancing drug discovery. Scheduled for release later this month, the models are part of the company’s Health AI Developer Foundations program. TxGemma is designed to process both natural language and molecular structures—ranging from small molecules to proteins and other therapeutic entities. By enabling predictions about critical drug properties like safety and efficacy, Google expects the platform will accelerate the long, expensive, and high-risk process of drug development.
With this announcement, Google enters a crowded and increasingly competitive field of AI-powered drug discovery, which gathered 87% of all alliance investment in 2025. While the technology holds promise, with the 30% estimate for new drugs discovered with AI, results so far have been mixed. Several AI-designed drugs have failed in clinical trials, despite successes like Rentosertib - an IPF drug developed by Insilico Medicine which recently reached 2a phase trials.
Google’s most notable drug discovery player is Isomorphic Labs, the DeepMind spinout founded in 2021 and led by Demis Hassabis. The London-based company has raised this year $600M in its first external funding round, as it works to translate its AI drug-design platforms into clinical programs. President Colin Murdoch has said the company is “getting very close” to starting human trials, initially focusing on cancer therapeutics. Additionally, in April DeepMind and Isomorphic made AlphaFold3 (protein structure prediction tool) available for non-commercial use.
Note: In October 2024 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to David Baker for computational protein design, and jointly to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for AlphaFold.
Drawing on AlphaFold’s capabilities, Isomorphic has already signed partnerships with Novartis and Eli Lilly, though it reported losses of £60M in 2023 due to heavy R&D spending and hiring.
Meanwhile, Alphabet’s other major healthcare initiative, Verily (previously Google Life Sciences), is navigating its own transformation. The life sciences arm plans to convert from an LLC to a C-corp as it prepares for a fresh funding round. CEO Stephen Gillett told employees the restructuring is intended to improve investor appeal, though no financing has been confirmed. At the same time, staff were informed that their equity had been revalued at roughly 80% below 2024 levels, reflecting what Gillett described as a gap between earlier valuations and current earnings. Nevertheless, the work is still ongoing and in early 2026 Verily plans to release Lightpath - an AI-backed chronic care solution aimed to help members with weight loss, e.g. providing support during and after GLP-1 use.