Virginia throws down gauntlet, challenges North Carolina for biomanufacturing investment

At AstraZeneca’s groundbreaking last week for a $4.5 billion manufacturing facility, Commonwealth of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin made it clear that he’s looking to challenge North Carolina, a neighboring state which in recent years has emerged as a major biomanufacturing hub attracting big investments from large biopharmaceutical companies and contract manufacturers.  

“There’s great competition around the United States, and I always very politely respect our neighbor to the south in North Carolina — they have a tremendous capability, and I just want to win,” Youngkin told the audience at last week’s AstraZeneca event. “I believe life sciences will be one of Virginia’s top industries for a long time to come.”

Still, in 2024 and 2025, the Tar Heel State saw more than $13.5 billion worth of announced life sciences investments, driven predominantly by manufacturing, according to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center (NCBiotech).

However, Youngkin in a LinkedIn post last week provided some of his own statistics about Virginia’s recent announcements about Big Pharma capital expenditures in his state.

“AstraZeneca’s $4.5 billion investment is the largest single manufacturing investment in the company’s history. Eli Lilly announced last month their landmark $5 billion state-of-the-art manufacturing facility,” Youngkin said. “With over $500 million in additional life science investments, Virginia has over 2,495 direct jobs and thousands of construction and supply chain jobs in the pipeline from the life sciences manufacturing boom.”

Old Dominion vs. Tar Heel State

North Carolina remains a life sciences powerhouse. Last week, commercial real estate and investment management firm JLL ranked the top U.S. biomanufacturing hubs and Raleigh-Durham earned the number two position, only behind number one New Jersey.

“We are definitely in a moment” when it comes to biomanufacturing investment, Bill Bullock, senior vice president for economic and statewide development at NCBiotech, told Pharma Manufacturing last month.

Bullock pointed to the fact that for the third time in four years, CNBC ranked North Carolina as “America’s Top State for Business” in 2025, ahead of number four Virginia.

“2024 was the biggest year in the history of North Carolina for life sciences, driven predominantly by manufacturing — we had $10.8 billion of announced investment,” Bullock said.

At the same time, Bullock acknowledged that North Carolina lobbied hard but lost to Virginia in getting Eli Lilly to build its recently announced $5 billion mega-facility near Richmond. Virginia was also successful in securing AstraZeneca’s $4.5 billion investment in a manufacturing facility near Charlottesville.     

At a Friday White House event announcing AstraZeneca’s drug pricing agreement with the Trump administration, CEO Pascal Soriot said “it has been a great pleasure to work with Governor Youngkin and his team” calling them “dealmakers that move at the speed of business.”

Youngkin in his remarks at the White House said President Donald Trump has “driven a reshoring of critical supply chains” that no one thought could happen — including pharmaceutical manufacturing — which are coming back to the U.S.

“With pharmaceutical manufacturing, and active pharmaceutical ingredients particularly, coming back to America it changes everything,” Youngkin said. “In Virginia, Mr. President, we’ve been blessed with nearly $10 billion of commitments to build new pharmaceutical manufacturing.”