Citing a rosy view of the U.S. economy’s potential for growth over the next several years, British Big Pharma AstraZeneca is substantially boosting its investment in manufacturing and R&D in the country.

AstraZeneca on Tuesday revealed that it’s adding $2 billion more to its current outlay in the U.S., representing a total capital investment of $3.5 billion. The cash will be used to grow the company’s research and production footprint in the States by the end of 2026, generating more than 1,000 new jobs along the way, AZ said in a release issued Tuesday morning.

Chief among AZ’s U.S. manufacturing projects are the construction of a next-generation biologics plant in Maryland, a cell therapy capacity expansion on both the East and West Coast and the buildout of specialty manufacturing capabilities in Texas.

Aside from manufacturing, the company’s upgraded investment will also bolster AZ’s efforts to set up an R&D center in Cambridge, Massachusetts’ Kendall Square. Full details of how much of the cash injection will go, and where, and timelines for completion were not given in the brief release. 

The drugmaker is however touting the cash infusion as “the first of a series of important steps” in its plan to generate $80 billion in total revenue by 2030. The U.S. represents AZ’s biggest market and made up some 44% of its total revenue as of 2024’s third quarter, the company explained in its release.

“This is a plan that we’ve been working on for a number of years,” AZ CEO Pascal Soriot said of the U.S. investment during its earnings call to the media Tuesday. “We accelerated it in the recent past because we’re very confident in the future growth of the economy in the United States.”

When asked on the call about a potential link between President-elect Donald Trump’s second term and the timing of AstraZeneca’s upgraded U.S. spending, Soriot declined to talk politics, but noted that “the announcement of an investment of $3.5 billion is a testimony of our confidence in the U.S. economy—of the U.S. marketplace over the next few years.”

“We want to supply the U.S. from the U.S. to the extent we can,” the CEO added. “And we want to invest in R&D and science in this country.”

As it stands, AZ employs roughly 17,800 employees across 17 R&D, manufacturing and commercial sites in 12 U.S. states.

Despite the investment update, many of the projects AstraZeneca outlined are, in fact, not exactly new. For instance, the company announced plans for its cell therapy facility in Rockville, Maryland back in February.

At the time, the company said the plant would be used to launch its cell therapy platforms in the U.S. for cancer trials and future commercial supply, with an initial focus on T-cell therapies for global clinical trials.

Elsewhere, the company blueprinted its Kendall Square R&D center all the way back in 2022. The facility, which AZ expects to complete in 2026, will serve as both a strategic R&D hub and the corporate headquarters for the British pharma’s rare disease subsidiary Alexion.

AZ’s U.S. manufacturing efforts form part of the drugmaker’s plan to separate its U.S. and China supply chains amid an increasingly tense geopolitical climate.

Soriot originally telegraphed the dual production endeavor in March at the Boao Forum for Asia in China and confirmed the plan on Tuesday’s call.

“We have a supply chain that is focused on what you might call the West—the U.S., of course, Europe—and then we have a supply chain that is focused more on China and some of the emerging markets,” Soriot said. “We’ve been working on this for a number of years already and we continue doing it.”

AZ unveiled its investment update amid a spree of other announcements Tuesday.

In 2024’s third quarter, the company generated nearly $13.6 billion in total revenue, up 21% in constant currencies over the sum it brought home for the period in 2023. Over the first nine months of the year, the company has reeled in a total of $37.6 billion, AZ said (PDF) in a separate earnings release.