AI in Scientific Discovery Market Size:
The AI in Scientific Discovery Market is expected to witness robust growth over the forecast period.
Artificial intelligence is playing a transformative role in scientific discovery, significantly propelling the AI in scientific discovery market. One of the major drivers is the incredible advances in artificial intelligence in the recent past and increasing investment for further advancement. For instance, DeepMind has demonstrated how AI can transcend traditional applications—most notably through innovations such as AlphaGo and AlphaFold, which accurately predict the 3D structures of proteins. Thus, with continuing advancements in general-purpose learning algorithms, the AI in scientific discovery market is poised for substantial growth. In addition to technological advancements, the need for faster research and innovation, increasing complexity of scientific discovery and cross-industry demand is leading the market to grow.
AI in Scientific Discovery Market Overview & Scope:
The AI in Scientific Discovery Market is segmented by:
- Application Area: The AI in Scientific Discovery Market by application is segmented into drug discovery & pharmaceuticals, materials science & engineering, genomics & molecular biology, climate & environmental science, physics, quantum & chemistry research, astronomy & space science, and agricultural & food science. Drug discovery & pharmaceuticals hold the largest share due to high adoption of AI in identifying potential drug targets, drug candidate screening and design, predicting drug properties and toxicity and accelerating clinical trials.
- Deployment Mode: By deployment mode, the market is segmented into cloud-based, on-premise, and hybrid deployment. Cloud-based platforms dominate the market as they offer scalability and easy integration with large datasets.
- End-User: The end-users of AI in scientific discovery include pharmaceutical & biotechnology companies, chemical & materials manufacturers, academic & research institutions, government research agencies & laboratories, space & defense organizations, and technology & AI solution providers. Pharmaceutical and biotech firms are the largest users as they are increasingly using AI in drug delivery and pharmaceuticals for reducing R&D cost and driving efficiency and innovation.
- Region: The market is segmented into five major geographic regions, namely North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific. North America holds the largest share due to high investments in R&D for artificial intelligence, strong pharmaceuticals and biotech markets, high adoption of AI technologies and presence of AI techs. The Asia Pacific region is also witnessing rapid growth due to increasing government support, rising academic research output, and expansion of AI capabilities in countries like China, Japan, South Korea, and India.
Top Trends Shaping the AI in Scientific Discovery Market:
- Increasing Use of Generative AI
There is an emerging trend of use of generative AI in scientific discovery. Generative AI accelerate the pace of discovery. It also expands the boundaries of scientific inquiry. It also expands the hypothesis space beyond the limits of human intuition and bias.
For instance, in drug discovering, generative AI is already being used to rapidly design novel molecular structures optimized against specific diseases. Companies like Sakana.AI are creating “The AI scientists” to fully automate the hypothesis generation, experimentation, and analysis pipeline.
- Increasing Use in Drug Discovery Pipelines
There is increasing use of AI in drug discovery. Pharmaceuticals firms are increasingly using AI for target identification and biomarker prediction in clinical trial designs, i.e., across the end-to-end process.
To leverage the trend, many companies such as Animal Biotech, BioTech AI Company, Cradle Bio and others are offering solutions.
AI in Scientific Discovery Market Growth Drivers vs. Challenges
Opportunities:
- Advancements in AI technologies: The incredible advancement in AI technologies and growing investment in AI technologies, tailored for scientific discovery in key areas like material science, drug discovery and pharmaceuticals and others, is the key factor behind the market’s growth. AI technologies such as deep learning, natural language processing and generative models are transforming the analysis of vast biological data and predicting drug-target interactions faster, such as Insilico Medicine’s Pharma.AI. Also, for example, machine learning predicts material properties (like Citrine Informatics Materials Genome Platform) while deep neural networks (like Deep Genomics’s AI Workbench) decode complex genomic sequences, predict gene functions, and identify mutations.
- Handling Complex and Large-Scale Data: Advanced scientific discovery instruments and techniques generate massive and complex datasets. ALos, scientific problems require combining different data types, which is not efficiently done by traditional methods. Thus, to improve accuracy and analyse large datasets, AI’s ability to analyze helps. As per a paper published in Nature, Google DeepMind discovered 2.2 million new crystals, which is predicted to be equivalent to 800 years of knowledge. It's GNoME deep learning tool dramatically increases the speed and efficiency of discovery by predicting the stability of new materials. GNoMe predicts 21,000 stable crystals, which is a huge leap, nearly 9 times more than computational methods (48,000) and over 20 times more than human experimentation (20,000).
Challenges:
- Data Privacy and Security Concerns: The application of AI raises strict privacy regulations and security challenges, as it deals with sensitive scientific and patient data. There are concerns over data ownership, AI-generated discoveries, and ethical use of AI in research. Also, many stakeholders are hesitant to rely on AI-driven results. These factors limit data sharing and slow down AI adoption, restraining the market growth as ensuring privacy, data integrity, and security when handling large scientific datasets remains a major challenge.
AI in Scientific Discovery Market Regional Analysis
- North America: North America holds a key leadership position in the AI in scientific discovery market. The region's advanced research infrastructure, strong investment in scientific discovery, strong market for pharmaceuticals and biotechnology companies and high adoption of AI technologies across sectors, including in drug discovery. At the same time, presence of world-class research institutions and tech giants is enabling breakthroughs in drug discovery, genomics, environmental science, and more.
- USA: USA accounts for the largest share in the North American regions. The leadership in scientific drug discovery, massive R&D investment, strong biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and the country leadership in AI research, fuelled by presence of key tech giants, drives the market dominance.
AI in Scientific Discovery Market Competitive Landscape
The market is moderately fragmented, featuring a blend of early-stage startups like Atomwise and Insilico Medicine, big tech giants such as Google, IBM and NVIDIA, and specialized AI platforms that offer domain-specific tools for research labs and institutions such as Schrödinger. The market is trending towards consolidation, witnessed by increasing acquisitions of niche players by large firms. There is also growing academic-corporate partnerships.
- Product Innovation: In May 2025, Illumina Inc. unveiled PromoterAI, which is an new AI alogrithmn for accurately deciphering pathogenic regulatory genetic variants in the noncoding regions of the human genome.
- Product Launch: In July 2024, Exscientia plc, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Recursion, launched an AWS AI-powered platform to power its end-to-end drug discovery and automation.
AI in Scientific Discovery Market Scope:
| Report Metric |
Details |
| Study Period |
2021 to 2031 |
| Historical Data |
2021 to 2024 |
| Base Year |
2025 |
| Forecast Period |
2026 – 2031 |
| Report Metric |
Details |
| Growth Rate |
CAGR during the forecast period |
| Study Period |
2020 to 2030 |
| Historical Data |
2020 to 2023 |
| Base Year |
2024 |
| Forecast Period |
2025 – 2030 |
| Forecast Unit (Value) |
USD Billion |
| Segmentation |
- Application Area
- Deployment Mode
- End-User
- Geography
|
| Geographical Segmentation |
North America, South America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific |
| List of Major Companies in the AI in Scientific Discovery Market |
|
| Customization Scope |
Free report customization with purchase |
AI in Scientific Discovery Market Segmentation:
- By Application Area
- Drug Discovery & Pharmaceuticals
- Materials Science & Engineering
- Genomics & Molecular Biology
- Climate & Environmental Science
- Physics, Quantum & Chemistry Research
- Astronomy & Space Science
- Agricultural & Food Science
- By Deployment Mode
- Cloud-Based
- On-Premise
- Hybrid Deployment
- By End-User
- Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Companies
- Chemical & Materials Manufacturers
- Academic & Research Institutions
- Government Research Agencies & Laboratories
- Space & Defense Organizations
- Technology & AI Solution Providers
- By Region
- North America
- South America
- Europe
- United Kingdom
- Germany
- France
- Italy
- Others
- Middle East & Africa
- Asia Pacific
- China
- India
- Japan
- South Korea
- Others
Our Best-Performing Industry Reports:
Navigation:
Page last updated on: September 11, 2025