Merck to partner with Google Cloud on AI initiatives

A Merck logo is seen on scientist's lab coat in West Point, Pa., on Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. (AP / Matt Rourke)

NEW YORK, April 22 (Reuters) - Drugmaker Merck & Co said on Wednesday it will partner with Google Cloud to build up its artificial intelligence capabilities, investing as much as $1 billion with Google over a number of years to fund AI infrastructure, engineers and licensing of 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 alongside Merck teams, executives from both companies said.

“I easily see us investing a billion over the next several years in this, in those capabilities,” Dave Williams, Merck’s chief information and digital officer, said in an interview. “We’re not just buying tokens. It is really the tool set” Google Cloud offers, he said, including Gemini Enterprise and the company’s engineers.

Williams said the companies haven’t 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 across Merck’s drug research, regulatory work, manufacturing and commercial operations.

Both companies framed the collaboration as a way to accelerate drug development.

“We’ve always said we wanted AI to play a positive role in society. One of the ways is to help people find cures to illnesses,” Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud, said in the same interview. “They have the domain knowledge. We’re bringing the AI tools and platform and cyber capability to help them build using these tools.”

Merck plans to use AI across the drug development process, Williams said, including running computerized simulations of laboratory experiments and speeding the regulatory process. Merck has used AI to help prepare sections of clinical study reports for roughly two years with some success, he said, and now plans to expand that approach.

“We feel there’s a tremendous opportunity there, and it’s a huge information challenge,” he said.

Williams added that Merck already has used Google’s technology to cut down by half the time and cost of compiling dossiers required in many countries to secure reimbursement for new medicines.

“This isn’t a pilot,” Williams said. “We’re submitting dossiers in markets using this new capability, and we’re now scaling it globally.”

Reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Paul Simao