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U.S. Pharma manufacturing investments soared in 2025, with major companies pledging more than $370 billion over the next five years, according to a market trends report by DPR Construction, which counts pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Novartis and Roche among its clients.
“It’s unprecedented,” said Michael Marston, co-head of the life sciences lead market at DPR. “We’ve never seen anything like it, at least in my career, which is over 35 years.”
That dollar amount continues to rise, with drugmakers announcing new projects at a steady pace. Most recently, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis unveiled plans to build a new radioligand therapy manufacturing facility in Winter Park, Florida, as part of a US$23 billion investment pledge announced in April 2025.
While there were outliers, Marston said a significant portion of the investments are concentrated in a few key hubs: Pennsylvania and North Carolina, which are more established, as well as emerging hubs like Ohio and Texas.
“Cities, municipalities and states are making it attractive for businesses from a tax perspective and from a local community support perspective to go to these areas,” he said. “For example, in North Carolina, it’s not just about tax incentives, it’s about the community itself. Local education, community colleges, and certainly the larger public or private colleges, support the life sciences community where they offer majors and develop workers that can be sustained in these new facilities.”
Here’s a closer look at some key investments in each of these centers.
Establishment: North Carolina
Anchored by its Research Triangle region spanning three major institutions, North Carolina is already home to 108 biopharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. Thanks to investment pledges in 2025, this number will increase.
Novartis began construction on a 700,000-square-foot flagship manufacturing facility in December. Scheduled to open in 2028, the project includes a new facility in Morrisville and a new site in Durham, as well as the expansion of an existing Novartis facility in Durham. The company expects to create 700 new jobs in North Carolina by 2030.
J&J also spends heavily in North Carolina. In early 2025, the company broke ground on a $2 billion manufacturing facility project in Wilson. The drugmaker followed that up with a $2 billion deal in September for manufacturing space at Fujifilm Biotechnologies’ Holly Springs location. It also recently announced plans to build a second multimillion-dollar facility in Wilson.
Another big player increasing North Carolina spending is Biogen, which plans to invest an additional $2 billion in its existing manufacturing footprint in Research Triangle Park.
Emerging: Texas
Everything is bigger in Texas, the saying goes, and that’s true of Eli Lilly’s plans to build a new $6.5 billion manufacturing facility in Houston, marking one of the state’s largest life sciences investments. Lilly expects the project to bring 615 high-paying jobs for engineers, scientists, operations staff and lab technicians, as well as an additional 4,000 jobs during construction. The facility is also important because it will manufacture Lilly’s long-awaited oral GLP-1, which is expected to receive approval in March.
With its business environment and the Texas Medical Center biomanufacturing TMC BioPort, the state also proved an attractive investment site for other companies in 2025. Novartis plans to build two new radioligand therapy manufacturing facilities in Florida and Texas, and in October, UK-based AstraZeneca opened an expanded manufacturing facility in couple to double the output of your high blood potassium treatment, Lokelma.
Establishment: Pennsylvania
With Philadelphia, a consolidated pharmaceutical company hotspot and Pittsburgh, an emerging sector, Pennsylvania’s life sciences sector employs 100,000 workers from nearly 3,100 companies that have secured more than 10,700 new life sciences patents over the past five years.
The life sciences industry continues to pour manufacturing investment into the state. GSK announced plans in September to build a new one biological The Flex Factory in Upper Merion focused on drugs for respiratory diseases and cancer, and construction is scheduled to begin this year. It is part of a larger $1.2 billion investment in advanced manufacturing facilities, AI and advanced digital technologies that will also include new capabilities.
In addition, J&J began 2026 by announcing plans to build a next-generation cell therapy manufacturing site in Pennsylvania.
Emerging: Ohio
With deep manufacturing roots and new initiatives to train biomanufacturing workers, position Ohio communities for life sciences growth, and add biomanufacturing to Ohio’s manufacturing competition model, the Buckeye State was an attractive landing spot for several pharmaceutical investors in 2025.
Among them is Amgen, which in April announced a $900 million expansion of its Ohio manufacturing facility as part of a $1.4 billion investment plan that it said has created 750 jobs.
Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA broke ground in June on a pharmaceutical manufacturing and R&D facility in Columbus. The company also committed to $1 billion by 2030 to further expand its manufacturing and R&D capabilities in the United States.
