Pfizer Adds AI Executive Layer as Tech Investments Mount

Pfizer is recruiting for two VP-level AI roles as the company moves to scale AI across its enterprise operations. The open positions, Head of AI Center of Excellence and Chief AI Architect, both report to Jeremy Forman, who was promoted to Chief AI, Data & Analytics Officer last month. Forman previously served as Vice President of Global R&D AI, Data, and Analytics at Pfizer since March 2024, where he focused on building responsible and scalable AI and data products to support drug discovery, drug development, and operational efficiency. The Head of AI CoE will be responsible for building and operating secure, low-latency AI and LLM platforms and ensuring delivery of measurable outcomes in a regulated environment. The Chief AI Architect will own Pfizer's end-to-end AI architecture vision, translating capabilities such as agentic systems and large language models into scalable, reusable patterns enterprise-wide. Chief Scientific Officer Chris Boshoff confirmed the company is also actively recruiting and embedding AI engineers across discovery, medical regulatory, safety, pharmacovigilance, and clinical trial execution. Laying the Groundwork The hiring push accompanies a series of recent technical investments that Forman and the incoming VP hires will be expected to scale. In January 2026, Pfizer announced a collaboration with Boltz, PBC to deploy biomolecular AI foundation models, including Boltz-2 and BoltzGen, for small-molecule and biologics design, with Pfizer retaining full ownership of any compounds discovered through the platform. That same month, Pfizer struck a multi-year deal with Cartography Biosciences to discover tumor-selective antigens for oncology programs. Earlier, in December 2025, Pfizer signed a licensing deal with Adaptive Biotechnologies to access TCR-antigen data for training AI tools across multiple disease areas, with potential milestone payments of up to $890 million. Pfizer also partnered with Flagship Pioneering to use the Logica AI platform to discover novel inhibitors for autoimmune diseases. On infrastructure, through its collaboration with AWS, Pfizer has pursued 14 generative AI and machine learning projects, stating it is cutting prototype-to-MVP timelines to as little as six weeks and reducing infrastructure costs by 55 percent. The company has also stated it is adding more than 1,200 GPUs to its data centers. A 2025 internal AI Festival spanning 54 sessions across seven countries signals the cultural groundwork being laid ahead of the new leadership hires. ROI, So Far Pfizer has begun citing specific outcomes from its AI programs. Its "Golden Batch" manufacturing initiative, which applies AI to replicate optimal production conditions, is projected to contribute to $0.7 billion in manufacturing savings in 2026. The company has also reported reductions in drug discovery timelines, research hours saved, and improved manufacturing yields. Some $500 million in operational AI savings is being reinvested into R&D productivity. CEO Albert Bourla has pointed to AI-driven savings as a direct funding source for the clinical pipeline, as the company manages revenue pressure from patent expiries. Pfizer reported full-year 2025 revenues of $62.6 billion, beating analyst expectations, though its stock fell approximately 3.5% on earnings day. Pfizer has publicly acknowledged risks accompanying the accelerating deployment, including the potential for algorithmic bias if models are trained on limited datasets, data privacy obligations, and challenges around the interpretability of deep learning models.

Pfizer Adds AI Executive Layer as Tech Investments Mount

Laying the Groundwork

Keep reading. It's free.

Related stories