12 min read·
AI for scientific discovery costs in 2026: platform licensing, compute, and integration economics
Running a single large-scale AI-driven drug discovery campaign costs $2–10 million in compute alone, while materials science screening runs $500K–$3 million. This guide details platform licensing fees, cloud compute pricing, data curation costs, and ROI timelines showing 3–7× returns when AI reduces R&D cycles from years to months.