Lab image courtesy of Merck & Co.
Drugmaker Merck & Co. is committing up to $1 billion over the next decade-plus to make Google Cloud its primary AI anchor, the companies announced Wednesday at Google’s Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas. The deal covers AI infrastructure, engineers, and licensing of Google’s Gemini Enterprise platform, with Google Cloud staff embedded alongside Merck teams.
The Google agreement, which the firms expect to last a decade or more, caps a flurry of early-2026 dealmaking for Merck. In just the first few months of the year, Merck has aligned with Guardant Health, Illumina’s Billion Cell Atlas, the Mayo Clinic and Tempus. That builds on top of 2025 work with Variational AI and Turbine and a KERMT small-molecule model co-developed with Nvidia.
Merck’s AI stack appears to be among the most complex in top-10 pharma. The Google Cloud pact could offer some degree of synthesis as it will span its discovery research, regulatory processes, manufacturing and commercial operations, as Reuters notes.
Merck’s burgeoning digital transformation play comes as Keytruda, Merck’s PD-1 blockbuster, is facing a loss of exclusivity around 2028. For context, Keytruda did $31.68B in FY2025 per Merck’s 10-K, up from $29.48B in FY2024. That’s a roughly 7.5% YoY growth rate on a drug that drives close to half of Merck’s revenue.
Dave Williams, Merck’s chief information and digital officer, alluded to the pressure in describing the Google Cloud deal, saying the company is entering “one of the most significant launch periods in our company’s history.”
Merck’s Google push extends an AI buildout that has been underway for several years. In June 2025, the company said an internal generative AI platform had cut the time needed to produce first drafts of clinical study reports from two to three weeks to three to four days. Merck also said that its AI push reduced average drafting effort from 180 hours to 80 hours and cut errors by 50%. Beyond documentation, Merck has also used AI in manufacturing through its HawkAVI platform on AWS, which the company says reduced false reject rates by 50%, and in discovery through models such as KERMT, a small-molecule model Merck developed with Nvidia and made available through BioNeMo and Clara Open Models.
Initiative / Partner
Date
Overview
Source
An overview of Merck & Co.’s internal AI stack
GPTeal
Active (Jun 2025 update)
Internal GenAI platform (>50k users). Reduces clinical study report drafting time by over 70% and errors by 50%.
Business Insider
KERMT (w/ Nvidia)
Active
Open-source small-molecule model trained on >11M molecules; available via Nvidia BioNeMo/Clara.
Merck.com
TEDDY (w/ BCG X)
Mar 2025
Family of foundation models for single-cell biology built with BCG X AI Science Institute.
BCG Global
Merck’s enterprise infrastructure
Google Cloud
Apr 2026
Up to $1B partnership deploying Gemini Enterprise and dedicated engineers across corporate/R&D functions.
Merck.com
AWS / Accenture
Since 2021
Cloud migration and manufacturing modernization. HawkAVI platform reduced false reject rates by ~50%.
Accenture
Azure / Microsoft
2022
Ecosystem support lane; provided cloud computing backbone for startups via the Merck Digital Sciences Studio.
Merck.com
Core strategic AI partners
Open Targets Consortium
Apr 2024
Consortium participation supporting identification, prioritization, and validation of drug targets.
Open Targets
Owkin
Dec 2023
AI-powered digital pathology diagnostics (EU market), initially focusing on MSI-H pre-screening.
Merck.com
BCG
May 2024
GenAI collaboration to mine omics data for novel drug targets in chronic/degenerative diseases.
BCG Global
Variational AI
Sep 2025
Enki-based GenAI collaboration targeting two designated small-molecule targets.
Variational AI
Turbine
Aug 2025
AI-driven simulated cell and tumor models designed for hard-to-treat cancers.
Turbine AI
Illumina Billion Cell Atlas
Jan 2026
Founding participant in a mass perturbation-data effort to fuel AI-model training and target validation.
Illumina
Guardant Health
Jan 2026
Multi-year companion diagnostics and commercialization agreement tied to Merck oncology.
Guardant
Mayo Clinic
Feb 2026
Combining Merck’s AI/ML capabilities with Mayo’s clinical, imaging, and genomic datasets for drug discovery.
Merck.com
Tempus
Mar 2026
Expanded multi-year AI-driven precision medicine and biomarker discovery collaboration.
Tempus AI
Quotient Therapeutics
Mar 2026
Somatic-genomics platform deal focusing on target discovery for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).
Quotient Tx
Infinimmune
Mar 2026
Multi-target human antibody discovery collaboration.
Merck.com
Other discovery and design partners
BigHat Biosciences
Nov 2022
ML-guided antibody discovery spanning up to three programs.
BigHat Bio
Absci
Jan 2022
AI-powered drug creation platform specifically applied to proteins and enzymes.
Merck.com
Merck Digital Sciences Studio
Jun 2022
Healthcare startup funnel backed by Azure; provides ecosystem context rather than direct pipeline creation.
Merck.com