Anthropic’s $14.23B R&D budget nears Eli Lilly’s $14.6B

By Tom Whitfield

Anthropic spent $14.23 billion on research and development in the 12 months ended June 30, 2026, against Eli Lilly’s $14.6 billion over the same period, according to Anthropic’s Oct. 26 S-1 registration statement filed with the SEC.

Lilly’s annual R&D budget has more than doubled, rising from about $6.0 billion in 2020 to $13.34 billion in 2025, with continued growth into 2026. The comparison puts AI model development and drug discovery on nearly the same spending scale.

How did Anthropic’s R&D budget accelerate?

During 2025, Anthropic reorganized its income statement around cost types such as compute and personnel. It moved research and development into Note 8 of its financial statements, where the company retains the older breakdown by function.

Note 8 reports R&D of $422 million in 2023, $2.28 billion in 2024 and $6.34 billion in 2025. In the first half of 2026, the total reached $9.74 billion, 5.3 times the $1.85 billion recorded in the year-earlier period.

Anthropic’s S-1 defines the category as mainly compute for “model development, research, and internal usage workloads,” plus staff, software and overhead.

Compute, software and overhead account for at least two-thirds of Anthropic’s first-half R&D spending, according to R&D World’s calculation. Companywide personnel expense of $3.15 billion leaves at least $6.59 billion of the $9.74 billion R&D total for those other costs.

Anthropic employed about 5,300 people at Sept. 30, with a majority working in research, engineering and product development. That staffing mix makes the filing’s allocation of compute between experimentation, model training and internal workloads material to any productivity comparison.

How large are the gaps across sectors?

Alphabet and Meta each spent well over $50 billion on R&D in 2025, more than three times the largest drug-industry budgets. Microsoft and Apple spent more than twice as much in their latest fiscal years.

AI labs

• OpenAI spent $19.18 billion, equal to 147% of revenue, in 2025. The figure came from leaked audited accounts reported by Fortune and verified by the Financial Times in June.
• Anthropic spent $14.23 billion, or 72% of revenue, in the 12 months to June 30, 2026. Its 2025 R&D was $6.34 billion, equal to 138% of revenue.

Technology companies

• Alphabet spent $61.09 billion, or 15.2% of revenue, in 2025.
• Meta spent $57.37 billion, or 28.5%, in 2025.
• Microsoft spent $35.56 billion, or 10.7% of revenue, in the fiscal year ended June 2026.
• Apple spent $34.55 billion, or 8.3%, in the fiscal year ended September 2025.
• Amazon does not disclose standalone R&D in the comparison. Its $108.52 billion of technology and infrastructure spending includes data centers and other costs.

Drugmakers and healthcare companies

• Roche spent $16.08 billion, or 21.7% of revenue, in 2025, converted from CHF13.35 billion at the 2025 average exchange rate.
• Merck spent $15.79 billion, or 24.3%, in 2025.
• Johnson & Johnson spent $14.67 billion, or 15.6%, in 2025; the figure covers the whole company, including medical technology.
• AstraZeneca spent $14.23 billion, or 24.2%, in 2025.
• Eli Lilly spent $13.34 billion, or 20.5%, in 2025. Including acquired in-process R&D raised the total to $16.25 billion.
• Novartis spent $11.20 billion, or 20.5%, in 2025.
• Pfizer spent $10.44 billion, or 16.7%, in 2025.

Over the first half of 2026, Anthropic’s $9.74 billion exceeded the ongoing R&D spending of every large U.S. drugmaker cited. Merck spent about $8.5 billion, excluding a $13.8 billion charge for acquired research projects; Lilly spent $7.3 billion, excluding $3.4 billion of acquired in-process R&D; and Johnson & Johnson spent $7.2 billion. Including acquired in-process R&D, Lilly’s first-half total reached $10.7 billion.

The spending shares tell a different story from the dollar rankings. Merck, AstraZeneca and Lilly devoted 24.3%, 24.2% and 20.5% of revenue to R&D in 2025. Alphabet, Microsoft and Apple recorded 15.2%, 10.7% and 8.3%, while Meta led the large technology and drugmaker groups at 28.5%.

Anthropic ran higher still: R&D equaled 138% of revenue in 2025 and 60% in the first half of 2026, as first-half sales rose 14-fold to $16.3 billion. OpenAI’s 2025 R&D reached 147% of revenue and exceeded every drugmaker’s annual figure, including Lilly’s $16.25 billion when acquired research projects counted.

When did technology overtake pharma in R&D rankings?

The European Commission’s Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard shows the shift beginning more than a decade ago. Pfizer or Roche led the ranking in 2004 and every year from 2006 through 2010, while three to five drugmakers occupied the global top 10 each year through 2014.

Since 2019, the global top 10 has included a drugmaker: Roche through 2022, followed by Johnson & Johnson in ninth place in 2024. The 2025 dollar rankings show technology firms occupying more of the budget-intensive end of corporate research.

OpenAI and Lilly both appear on R&D World’s list of the 100 most innovative companies of 2026. Their positions reflect different research systems, but both now command budgets commonly associated with pharmaceutical development.

What does compute mean for R&D budgets?

Lilly is investing in infrastructure too. In February, it inaugurated LillyPod, an NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD with 1,016 Blackwell Ultra GPUs in Indianapolis. The installation gives Lilly a direct comparison with the compute concentration inside Anthropic’s model-development budget.

The accounting boundaries remain different. Anthropic includes internal-usage workloads; drugmaker R&D excludes acquired in-process R&D unless noted; Johnson & Johnson includes medical technology; and Amazon combines research with data-center and infrastructure costs. Those definitions limit productivity comparisons based on headline spending alone.

The underlying company figures come from 10-K and 20-F filings, Roche’s annual report and Anthropic’s S-1. OpenAI is the methodological outlier: its figure comes from leaked audited accounts rather than a company filing in the comparison set.

What remains undefined in Anthropic’s IPO?

Anthropic plans to list its Class A shares on the Nasdaq under the symbol ANT. Its preliminary prospectus leaves both the share count and price range blank, so the filing establishes budget scale but not a public-market valuation.

For R&D portfolios, the next checkpoints are Anthropic’s final Nasdaq terms, whether its 5.3-times year-over-year first-half R&D level holds, and how Lilly uses its 1,016-GPU compute installation.