LAS VEGAS, Cloud Next 2026, April 22, 2026 – Merck (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, and Google Cloud today announced a landmark partnership to enhance Merck’s digital backbone as an AI-enabled enterprise. This multi-year investment, valued at up to $1 billion, will deploy an agentic platform across Merck’s research & development (R&D), manufacturing, commercial, and corporate functions – and includes Google Cloud engineers working alongside Merck teams to deploy Google Cloud’s most sophisticated AI, including Gemini Enterprise.
The partnership brings together Merck’s scientific and data leadership, with Google Cloud’s leading AI and cloud platforms to digitize data and help boost productivity for Merck’s 75,000 employees worldwide, supporting the company’s purpose of saving and improving lives around the world.
“Merck’s collaboration with Google Cloud represents the next phase of our AI journey, extending our longstanding use of advanced technologies into an intelligent agentic ecosystem that will work alongside our teams as we enter one of the most significant launch periods in our company’s history,” said Dave Williams, chief information and digital officer, Merck. “AI agents and generative tools will help our teams around the world reimagine processes at scale and bring scientific breakthroughs to patients faster.”
“Our partnership with Merck represents a fundamental shift in how technology supports the entire pharma value chain,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud. “By deploying an industry-first agentic ecosystem powered by Gemini Enterprise, Merck is not just optimizing business processes; it is building a future where the speed of AI and the expertise of human ingenuity come together to bring drugs to patients faster and solve problems that were previously out of reach.”
By combining the companies’ expertise, Merck will build advanced AI solutions on Google Cloud technology to drive new levels of scientific innovation and operational impact. This includes deploying Gemini Enterprise across end-to-end R&D workflows, optimizing manufacturing through predictive analytics and intelligent automation, enhancing commercial and patient engagement with data-driven personalization and leveraging AI-powered automation in corporate functions to power productivity. This collaboration brings together two industry leaders to realize business-driving value across the next era of biopharmaceutical growth.
About Merck
At Merck, known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, we are unified around our purpose: We use the power of leading-edge science to save and improve lives around the world. For more than 130 years, we have brought hope to humanity through the development of important medicines and vaccines. We aspire to be the premier research-intensive biopharmaceutical company in the world – and today, we are at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions that advance the prevention and treatment of diseases in people and animals. We foster a diverse and inclusive global workforce and operate responsibly every day to enable a safe, sustainable and healthy future for all people and communities.
About Google Cloud
Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated, and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.