Big R&D Spenders: Pharma and Chips

May 20, 2013 | Derek Lowe breaks down how much various companies and sectors spend on R&D. Of the top 1000 companies, the average R&D budget as percent of sales is between 1% and 1.5%. But there are big spenders: drug discovery and semiconductor companies. Some examples: Roche spends 19%, Merck over 17%, and Lilly spends 23%. On the chip side, Intel spends 17% and AMD spends 22%. In the Pipeline