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Johnson & Johnson was the leading biotech and pharmaceutical company globally based on revenue as of March 2026. Roche Holding reported revenue of approximately 80 billion U.S. dollars. 

Biotech and pharmaceutical companies

Pharmaceutical companies are best known for manufacturing pharmaceutical drugs. These drugs have the aim to diagnose, to cure, to treat, or to prevent diseases. The pharmaceutical sector represents a huge industry, with the global pharmaceutical market being worth around *** trillion U.S. dollars. The best known top global pharmaceutical players are Pfizer, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson from the U.S., Novartis and Roche from Switzerland, Sanofi from France, etc. Most of these companies are involved not only in pure pharmaceutical business, but also manufacture medical technology and consumer health products, vaccines, etc. 

There are both pure play biotechnology companies and pharmaceutical companies that, among other products, also produce biotech products within their biotechnological divisions. Most of the leading global pharmaceutical companies have biopharmaceutical divisions. Although not a pure play biotech firm, Roche from Switzerland is among the companies with the largest revenues from biotechnology products worldwide. In contrast, California-based company Amgen was one of the world’s first large pure play biotech companies.

Biotech companies use biotechnology to generate their products, most often medical drugs or agricultural genetic engineering. The latter segment is dominated by companies like Bayer CropScience and Syngenta. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity defines biotechnology as follows: "Any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use." In fact, biotechnology is thousands of years old, used in agriculture, food manufacturing, and medicine.