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AstraZeneca plans to spend $50 billion to expand manufacturing and research capabilities in the U.S. by 2030, it said on Monday, the latest big investment by a pharmaceutical company reacting to President Donald Trump’s tariff policy. The investment will fund a new drug manufacturing facility in Virginia and expand research and development (R&D) and cell therapy manufacturing in Maryland, Massachusetts, California, Indiana and Texas, it said in a statement. It will also upgrade the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker’s U.S. clinical trial supply network and support ongoing investment in novel medicines. On Monday, AstraZeneca said the expansion supports its ambition to reach $80 billion in annual revenue by 2030, with half coming from the U.S. The U.S. accounted for more than 40% of AstraZeneca’s annual revenue in 2024, and the company had been prioritising the market the world’s largest, worth $635 billion before Trump’s return to office. The move to scale up its U.S. footprint is the latest by a drugmaker as Trump threatens to impose import tariffs on the industry and seeks to boost domestic manufacturing. The sector has historically been spared from trade disputes. Trump has called on pharma companies to make more of the medicines they sell in the U.S. within the country, rather than importing active ingredients or finished medicines. He is also pushing for prices in the U.S. to fall to what other countries pay. CEO Pascal Soriot announced the plans in Washington, saying he believes that drug prices need to rise elsewhere and “equalize” with other countries effectively contributing more to research and development costs. “The United States cannot build or carry the cost of R&D for the entire world,” he said. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s department is leading a probe into pharmaceutical imports that could pave the way for new tariffs. “For decades Americans have been reliant on foreign supply of key pharmaceutical products. President Trump and our nations new tariff policies are focused on ending this structural weakness,” said Lutnick in a statement issued by AstraZeneca. While Trump has repeatedly threatened tariffs on the sector, he signalled earlier this month that companies would be given a year to 18 months to “get their act together” before any levies take effect. The company said that the timing and location of the announcement was linked to the U.S. policy environment, though some of the spending would have occurred regardless so that the infrastructure for future medicines was in place. The pledge is in addition to the $3.5 billion in investments the company announced in November 2024, the statement said. PLEDGES The $50 billion pledge matches the commitment announced by Swiss rival Roche in April and follows new spending plans unveiled this year by Eli Lilly & Co, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, and Sanofi. Also present at the announcement was Virginia State Governor Glenn Youngkin, a vocal Trump ally who has defended the administration’s tariff policies. The new Virginia facility the company’s largest single manufacturing investment will produce active ingredients for AstraZeneca’s experimental weight-loss medicines, including its oral GLP-1 candidate and an oral PCSK9 inhibitor for cholesterol management, it said. The company said the investment could create tens of thousands of new jobs, but declined to give specifics. It employs about 18,000 people in the U.S. and has a global workforce of about 90,000. In January it scrapped plans to invest 450 million pounds ($607.1 million) in its vaccine manufacturing plant in northern England, citing a cut in government support. Earlier this month, The Times reported the company was considering moving its stock market listing from London, where it is the exchange’s most valuable company worth 159 billion pounds, to the U.S. The company declined to comment. ($1 = 0.7415 pound) Ahmed Aboulenein and Maggie Fick, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Figma is targeting a valuation of $16.4 billion in its upcoming initial public offering, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The collaborative design software makera rival to platforms like Adobeplans to sell around 37 million shares priced between $25 and $28 each, which would generate up to $1 billion in proceeds and give the company a valuation between $14.6 billion and $16.4 billion. The targeted share price was disclosed in the companys updated S-1 statement, filed with the SEC on Monday. Figma had previously entered an agreement with Adobe to be acquired in 2022, but regulators nixed that deal. Its unclear when the listing will occur. A report from Bloomberg, citing an anonymous source, said shares are expected to be priced on July 30. Fast Company reached out to Figma for comment. Figma’s stock will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker FIG. It first filed paperwork with its intent to go public earlier this month. The companys filings show a positive trajectory that investors might find enticing. Figma says it has 13 million active users, and that its products are used by 95% of the Fortune 500. Last year, it drove $749 million in revenue, an increase of 48% year-over-year, and its most recent quarterly sales numbers, for the first few months of 2025, were similarly up 46% year-over-year. Figma’s forthcoming IPO follows several other tech-focused listings in recent months, including market debuts for Circle and Chime. Figma was named one of Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies of 2025.
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E-Commerce
As President Donald Trump considers life after the White House when his term-limited time in office ends in 2029, might he follow the path set by one of his predecessors and make a post-presidency pivot to an art career? Trump’s artistic skills are in the spotlight after The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump allegedly contributed a suggestive drawing and lewd poem for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. Trump denied having anything to do with the page, but in his denial, he told an undisputable lie: “I never wrote a picture in my life,” he told The Journal. Trump has, in fact, made many pictures in his life, and the description of the medium used to make the drawing reportedly sent to Epsteina heavy marker just so happens to be his medium of choice. Say what you will about the inconsistencies between his words, politics, and actions, but Trump has a consistent, distinctive artistic style. [Screenshot: Heritage Auctions] Trump created marker-made doodles showing recurring motifs of city skylines for charity auctions throughout the 2000s, when he hosted NBC’s The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice. “It takes me a few minutes to draw something. In my case, it’s usually a building or a cityscape of skyscrapers, and then I sign my name. But it raises thousands of dollars to help the hungry in New York through the Capuchin Food Pantries Ministry,” he wrote in his 2008 book, Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges Into Success. [Photo: Paul Buck/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock] Far from trompe l’oeil (French for “fools the eye”), a style in which objects are depicted with photographically realistic detail, one of Trump’s doodles of the Empire State Building is filled in with sharp black squiggles that resemble his own sharp, jagged signature, while a 2006 sketch of the George Washington Bridge stands apart from the rest and proves Trump has more artistic skill than he might let on. His sketch of the bridge shows a sense of depth and angles. [Screenshot: Julien’s Auctions] Viewed as a body of work, most of Trump’s sketches are rudimentary and his skylines blocky and simple (“Art may not be my strong point,” he admitted in Trump Never Give Up), but they share an aesthetic. And judging Trump’s work alongside the art of other presidentsfrom presidential doodles to former President George W. Bush’s post-presidency oil paintingsit’s clear that his style is singular. “Its sort of surprising that Trumps doodles show a bit of artistic talent,” David Greenberg, a journalism and media studies professor at Rutgers University and author of books including Presidential Doodles, tells Fast Company. “Id put him in maybe the top third of presidents in his doodling. Of course, its hard to say. Hes no Herbert Hoover, thats for sure.” The National Archives called Hoover “among Americas greatest doodling presidents.” Is there a market for Trump to make a name for himself as an artist out of office? Still, like with a painting by, say, Khloe Kardashian, Trump’s doodles aren’t valuable for their artistic merit, but for the artist’s famous name. Trump’s Empire State Building drawing sold at auction for $100 in 1995 for a charity; by 2017, when he was president, it resold for $16,000. By this measure Trump’s potential value as an artist has never been higher. More famous than ever, Trump could do worse than an art career.
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E-Commerce
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