Gilead Sciences has opened a 182,000-square-foot research centre at its Foster City, California headquarters, bringing its oncology, inflammation and research data science teams under one roof for the first time.
The building will house around 325 staff, including 260 laboratory scientists, across flexible "laboratory neighbourhoods" designed to be reconfigured as research priorities shift.
A dedicated bridge connects the centre to an adjacent building for equipment and material transfers, while a central Research Quad is intended to encourage cross-team collaboration.
Gilead has said the site is targeting LEED Gold certification, built on all-electric systems, energy-efficient design and drought-tolerant native planting.
Chair and CEO Daniel O'Day said the facility would help the company "deliver more breakthrough medicines faster."
As part of our broader $32 billion investment in the United States, this new facility also reflects our long-term commitment to American innovation.
Flavius Martin, Gilead's EVP of Research, said co-locating research disciplines and expanding data science capacity would "accelerate discovery."
Foster City is home to some of the most important biomedical research happening anywhere in the world and Gilead’s continued investment here is a vote of confidence in California’s life sciences workforce.
The building is one of three major Foster City projects under Gilead's $32bn US investment programme running through 2030.
A Technical Development Center is due to open in 2027 and a biologics manufacturing facility that broke ground in August is slated for 2029.
For context, Gilead first committed to the $32bn figure in May last year, when it added $11bn in new capital and operational spending to an already-planned $21bn programme.
The company has said the combined investment is projected to generate $43bn in US economic value and support more than 10,500 high-quality domestic jobs by 2030.
Roughly $4bn of the newer tranche is earmarked for capital projects such as labs and equipment, with a further $5bn for technology, operations and R&D site activities and $2bn for digital and advanced engineering work.
The Foster City expansion places Gilead among a cluster of major US drugmakers that have scaled up domestic manufacturing and R&D commitments during the past year.
Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb have all announced significant US investment increases during the past year — a shift industry observers have linked to tariff pressures and government efforts to bring more pharma production onshore.
