Over the past few decades, the idea of what counts as a lab has expanded from isolated benches and test rigs to globally distributed R&D environments that span cloud data centers, autonomous factories and national research campuses. The Top 100 Labs 2025 report profiles the commercial, institutional and national labs that are rebuilding their R&D…
Lab automation is “vaporizing”: Why the hottest innovation is invisible
[Image from Adobe Stock] Why you should read this report: Lab automation looks hot, but the usual indicators are quiet: patents are flat, vendors report uneven demand, and standard market metrics barely move. This report shows what those signals miss—where recent AI-drug-discovery capital actually landed, why “Lab Automation Engineer” roles increasingly require Python and APIs…
Global R&D Funding Forecast Preview 2025
The question is no longer if China will surpass U.S. R&D spending, but what happens next. R&D World’s 2025 Global Funding Forecast projects China reaching effective parity with the U.S. this year ($1.05T versus $1.07T in PPP terms), with a full crossover expected by 2026. While the specifics of the crossover vary based on your…
5 trends rewriting the rules of R&D labs
In 2025, R&D labs are being shaped by five interlinked trends. First, self-improving labs can dramatically shorten timelines. Second, cross-disciplinary science merges fields like biology, physics, and computing (as seen with DeepMind’s AlphaFold) to address complex questions faster. Third, virtual lab assistants reduce manual tasks. Fourth, lab robotics integrate robotic arms and liquid handlers, boosting…
25 technologies propelling the lab of the future
It’s clear. R&D budgets are tightening in many industries, ranging from automotive to biopharma and universities. In academia, for instance, there is an at least $11 billion federal research funding freeze while some automotive companies and suppliers trimming thousands of R&D positions and broader research investments. Although biopharma R&D efficiency has ticked up, the overall…