Amid a host of other organizations joining Google Cloud to boost AI technology, drugmaker Merck & Co said on Wednesday it will partner with Google Cloud to build out its artificial intelligence capabilities, investing $1 billion with Google over several years for AI infrastructure, engineers and licenses for the tech company’s Gemini enterprise platform.
The partnership, announced at Google’s Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas, builds on work already underway between the companies and includes Google Cloud engineers working with Merck teams, officials from both companies said.
“I can easily see us investing a billion dollars in these capabilities over the next several years,” Dave Williams, Merck’s chief information and digital officer, said in an interview.
“We’re not just buying tokens. It’s really the tool set” Google Cloud offers, which also includes Gemini Enterprise and the company’s engineers, he said.
Williams said the companies have not defined a specific time frame for the collaboration, but he expects it to be at least a decade-long partnership.
The companies said the partnership will work to deploy AI in Merck’s drug research, regulatory work, manufacturing and commercial operations.
The two companies outlined the collaboration as a way to accelerate drug development.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said in the same interview, “We’ve always said that we want AI to play a positive role in society. One way to do that is to help people find cures for diseases.” “They have the domain knowledge. We’re bringing in AI tools and platforms and cyber capabilities to help them build using these tools.”
Williams said Merck plans to use AI in the drug development process, including running computerized simulations of laboratory experiments and speeding up the regulatory process.
Merck has used AI to help prepare sections of clinical study reports for about two years with some success, he said, and now plans to expand that approach.
“We think there’s a tremendous opportunity there and it’s a huge information challenge,” he said.
Williams said Merck has already used Google’s technology to halve the time and cost of compiling the documentation required in many countries to ensure reimbursement for new drugs.
“This is not a pilot,” Williams said. “We are using this new capability to document submissions across markets, and now we are scaling it globally.”
It is noteworthy that Google Cloud is a unit of the world’s leading technology group Alphabet Inc.
