R&D budgets in perspective

A sense of scale can be valuable. Here are the 2012 Research & Development budgets of several tech companies and pharmaceutical companies compared to approximate annual disbursements from the Wellcome Trust and the HHMI. I’ve also included the annual budgets of the NIH, NSF, and DOD as well. All numbers are for 2012, or as close as I could get. If any of the numbers seem off, let me know. They’re all from public sources (SEC filings, annual reports, etc.).

Note that combined R&D budgets of six Big Pharma companies exceeds that of the NIH.

It’s also interesting to look at how the NIH budget breaks down per institute:

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