Big Pharma’s $600B US investment plans are short on details: CBRE

While large pharmaceutical companies in 2025 announced a total of approximately $600 billion in multi-year commitments to U.S.-based manufacturing and R&D, just $60 billion of the potential capital expenditure projects are tied to detailed amounts and locations, according to commercial real estate services and investment firm CBRE.

During a Tuesday webcast, CBRE provided a preview of findings from the firm’s upcoming 2026 U.S. Life Sciences Trends report, calling Big Pharma’s commitment to large-scale domestic investments a “historic” level for the industry nationally — but with some skepticism.

“If you take them at their word, that means you have about another $540 billion worth of these investments that are going to transpire over the next several years,” said Ian Anderson, senior director of research for CBRE’s life sciences and healthcare sectors.

However, CBRE continues to call into question the validity of some of Big Pharma’s U.S. investment pledges in 2025. In August, the firm estimated that approximately half of the then-announced investments from large pharmaceutical companies were previously planned or already occurred.  

During Tuesday’s webcast, Matt Gardner, CBRE’s Americas advisory leader for life sciences, told Pharma Manufacturing that the firm estimates “you can distill those to roughly half [of the announcements last year] being net new — perhaps more.”

In his presentation, Anderson said “we’ve only seen $60 billion in 2025 and even if we move the needle just the slightest bit, there’s a lot more to come in terms of this activity over the next several years — that’s obviously going to be a big tailwind.”

Among the major investment announcements from drugmakers in 2025, Merck and Pfizer plan to spend $70 billion each on U.S. manufacturing and R&D capital projects in the next few years, Johnson & Johnson has committed $55 billion, and there have been respective pledges of $50 billion each from AstraZeneca and Roche.  

Last month, AbbVie announced that it struck a drug pricing agreement with the Trump administration in exchange for a three-year exemption from tariffs. The drugmaker also pledged $100 billion in U.S.-based R&D and capital investments, including manufacturing, over the next decade. It is a significant increase from AbbVie’s commitment in 2025 to invest more than $10 billion in its U.S. manufacturing over the next 10 years.

Edita Hamzic, healthcare analyst at data and analytics firm GlobalData, in the latest monthly analysis said AbbVie’s agreement with the Trump administration signals a “fundamental shift” in U.S. drug pricing policy in which domestic manufacturing investment is no longer a peripheral consideration but a central element of negotiations.

“Exemptions from import tariffs and future pricing controls provide AbbVie with the flexibility to expand drug manufacturing capacity, modernize production technologies, and strengthen supply chain resilience while continuing to invest in its pipeline,” Hamzic said.

However, consulting firm West Monroe warned in its 2026 Life Sciences Industry Outlook that while expanding U.S. manufacturing may make sense for “high-volume or politically sensitive products” companies “should anticipate tight labor markets and longer lead times for capacity rollout.”

FDA novel drug approvals

In his Tuesday presentation, Anderson said an “impressive amount and pace of scientific progress” continues in the life sciences industry. He noted that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s most recent 10-year average of new drug approvals “was 59% higher than the approvals seen in the previous decade, and the number we saw in 2025 matches that average.”   

According to William Blair analysts, 2025 was a strong year for drugs approved by the FDA with record-high outsourcing penetration. Their analysis found the 73% of FDA approvals that outsourced active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing last year were substantially above the 11-year average of 61% and in line with the 74% outsourcing rate recorded in 2024 — the highest level observed since 2015. 

In the case of finished dose, the 65% of drugs outsourced last year represented the highest outsourcing rate the analysts have documented over an 11-year period — significantly exceeding the 50% average since 2015, according to William Blair. The analysts said the results bode well overall for contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) who are reaping the benefits of FDA drug approvals.