Thermo Fisher sees $500B US biomanufacturing investments by Big Pharma as tailwind

More than $500 billion in announced U.S. biopharma manufacturing investments will provide a multi-year tailwind for Thermo Fisher Scientific, according to presentations made by company executives at last week’s 2026 Investor Day.

Management told investors Thermo Fisher’s pharma services business, one of the world’s largest contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs), will benefit in the shorter term from the reshoring of biomanufacturing to the U.S., offering flexible CDMO capacity to meet customers’ near-term needs for both clinical and commercial production.

Fueled by more than $500 billion in domestic biomanufacturing investment planned by Big Pharma, CEO Marc Casper said Thermo Fisher is also positioned for longer-term tailwinds by selling bioproduction technologies and analytical instruments for new manufacturing sites and labs in the U.S. over the next few years.

“If you had asked me a couple of years ago, would I have expected a half a trillion dollars of commitments to U.S. manufacturing? I would have taken the no on that,” Casper said. “The reality is, it’s incredibly exciting because — when I think about the investment opportunities it means for a company like ours — we serve that not only in our clinical development and manufacturing capabilities, but our bioproduction equipment. We equip the lab, we supply the facilities, it really is an incredible opportunity.”

Advanced bioproduction technologies and instrumentation will enable new U.S. bioparma investments, according to Casper, who noted that the market is strengthening due to reshoring trends, rising biotechnology investment, as well as growth in biologics and complex modalities. 

“What you see is a larger focus on biologics versus small molecules,” Casper said. “Biologics are much more life science tools- and pharma services-intensive than small molecule. So that simple shift of what’s in the pipeline drives demand to our industry.”

Acquisition of Sanofi site expands US capacity

Biopharma customers need design, validation, and products for end-to-end workflow for their planned sites, as well as access to short-term U.S. production capacity for the same workflow in the interim — which is why Thermo Fisher says it has invested in expanding CDMO capacity to support customers’ domestic manufacturing needs.

Mike Shafer, president of biopharma services at Thermo Fisher, called out near-term tailwinds around transferring programs into the company’s existing U.S. CDMO capacity, including its recently acquired Sanofi sterile drug product manufacturing facility in Ridgefield, New Jersey.

The site, now part of Thermo Fisher’s pharma services business, specializes in fill‑finish and packaging of aseptic injectable medications and expands the company’s U.S. capacity, which Shafer contends will allow it to accelerate reshoring efforts for customers.  

“From a sterile fill-finish perspective, there’s huge demand for capacity — and so, we used our ability to deploy capital to acquire Sanofi’s New Jersey sterile fill-finish facility and create capacity for all of the programs that customers want to start transferring into the U.S.,” Shafer said. “We’re actually already winning new business, significant new business for our CDMO, because people are moving programs into our capacity right now.”

Seamless tech transfer will also ensure a smooth transition and workflow replication from Thermo Fisher’s CDMO capacity to biopharma customers’ own sites, according to Shafer, who noted that Thermo Fisher is currently working with a large pharma company and running validation runs in design centers ahead of such a future tech transfer.

“We’re already working with them on creating capacity — giving them capacity for their new programs to transfer in so we can start to run those now and actually validate them in a GMP environment,” he said. “And then, the last piece is so when they get the facility built, they want to ramp it up extremely quickly. And so, we will be in a great position to help them do that ramp quickly, because they’ve done the tech transfer and tests already.”

Boosting capacity with US investment

Thermo Fisher announced in early 2025 that it was making a $2 billion commitment to U.S. manufacturing and R&D over the next four years. Of that amount, $1.5 billion is earmarked for capital expenditures to enhance and expand manufacturing. The company is also growing sterile fill-finish capabilities at its Greenville, North Carolina.

At last week’s investor event, CFO Jim Meyer emphasized that Thermo Fisher’s pharma services business has been investing in production capabilities, with capacity coming online over the next several quarters supporting growth acceleration in the second half of 2026.

“We have well-contracted capacity coming online over the next several quarters that give us great visibility into the business progressing to stronger and sustainable organic growth in the back half of this year and beyond,” Meyer said. “In addition to the shorter-term impacts of capacity builds, we expect our long-term outlook to improve as well because our technologies and capabilities are incredibly well-positioned to have higher share in newly built production capacity.”

Purification, filtration & bioproduction business   

In February 2025, Thermo Fisher paid $4.1 billion in cash to buy Solventum’s purification and filtration business, whose technologies are used in the development and manufacturing of biologics spanning upstream and downstream workflows. 

According to Casper, the acquisition of the Solventum business allows Thermo Fisher to better address the needs of customers who are currently underserved in the bioprocessing filtration segment, with the goal of realizing approximately $125 million of adjusted operating income from synergies by year five.

“The rationale for the acquisition was it was adding leading capabilities in filtration and separations technologies in the production of biologics, a very complementary set of capabilities to our bioproduction portfolio,” Casper said. “While it’s early days, it starts out with a $750 million set of capabilities that’s been added to our company. We’re on track for this business to become a mid- to high-single-digit organic growth business.”

Thermo Fisher’s bioproduction products and process analytical technologies are meant to enhance yield, quality, and consistency, while supporting customers’ U.S. reshoring needs, according to the company. As these customers look to build new bioproduction manufacturing sites in the U.S., Thermo Fisher makes the case that they need design, validation, and products for end-to-end workflow for their planned sites.

Shafer contends that Thermo Fisher is continuing to execute on its strategy to enhance the company’s bioproduction business, which spans the full cycle from cell culture media and single-use technologies — including its DynaDrive single-use bioreactor platform — to filtration, purification and production chemicals.

“The one we’re showing right now is our DynaDrive single-use bioreactor that really enables customers to accelerate process development and scale up to a much larger scale with single-use technology,” Shafer said. “From lab scale all the way up to commercial scale on the DynaDrive platform, this really becomes the next generation. And it’s a great opportunity for us to capitalize on the new investments in building out manufacturing in the U.S.”