Veeva Systems Puts AI at the Center of Its Future

Bright orange was the primary color at Veeva’s R&D and Quality Summit in Boston this week. From lanyards and banners, to socks and shoes, pens, pins and even a dancing mascot named Vern, attendees were bombarded with the color, but for good reason. The event is a premier opportunity for life sciences professionals to gather and gain fresh insights on clinical operations, data, regulatory affairs, safety, quality control and the Veeva Vault platform.

The agenda was packed with speakers, sessions and Q&As, but the main event on Tuesday morning was the keynote by Peter Gassner, founder and CEO of Veeva Systems. Attendees who flooded into the ballroom where the speech was to be delivered were met by pumping music and a screen large enough to fit Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in IMAX. You might be forgiven for thinking that a pop star was about to appear on stage, but I think that was the point. This was Gassner’s opportunity to present Veeva’s vision, values and mission, and he aimed to make a splash. The anticipation was high, especially considering recent announcements from the company regarding its acquisition of Ostro in March, its expanded partnership with IQVIA announced in October and its recent commitments to embracing AI. People were buzzing about what Gassner would unveil.

Gassner, seemingly undaunted by the packed audience, opened his presentation by emphasizing the diversity of attendees across life sciences, including biotech companies, large pharmaceutical firms, CROs, research sites, IT professionals, and specialists in clinical, regulatory, safety, and quality functions, and reminding them that despite their varied backgrounds, attendees share a common goal: improving their organizations, advancing the industry, and ultimately helping more patients receive the right medicines.

In line with that shared goal, Gassner reiterated Veeva’s vision of building the industry cloud for life sciences through software, data, AI, and consulting services that make the industry more efficient and effective. The company’s mission, he said, is to help get more of the right medicines to more patients. In order to achieve this mission, the company’s long-term strategy involves three pillars:

• Complete the Industry Cloud: Veeva intends to continuously update applications to reflect evolving best practices, regulatory changes, and emerging modalities such as regenerative medicine
• Connect the Industry: Veeva aims to serve as the technology layer connecting sponsors, CROs, research sites, regulators, healthcare providers, and patients.
• Deliver Industry-Specific AI: Gassner described AI as the most significant technology shift of his career, surpassing earlier transformations brought by the internet and mobile computing.

AI Strategy

A major portion of Gassner’s keynote focused on Veeva AI, the overarching umbrella term for the company’s entire AI portfolio. Announced in 2025, Veeva AI  is an initiative that adds artificial intelligence to the Veeva Vault Platform and Veeva applications. It’s intended to help life sciences companies automate tasks and improve employee productivity using AI Agents and AI Shortcuts, and it works in all Veeva applications across all major areas, including clinical, regulatory, safety, quality, medical, and commercial.

Within Veeva AI, Veeva Systems divides its artificial intelligence strategy into two complementary concepts: Vault AI, which is designed to act as an assistant that helps human users do their jobs faster, and Veeva Falcon, which acts as digital labor that completes end-to-end workflows autonomously.

Vault AI

During the keynote, a demonstration of Vault AI highlighted its ability to answer questions directly using Vault data through an easy-to-use interface similar to that of ChatGPT. Vault AI offers AI-powered document analysis and comparison, user-created shortcuts and assistants, and custom agents built by customers alongside Veeva-developed agents, among other capabilities. The technology, which is totally optional for Veeva customers, is embedded directly inside the Veeva Vault Platform.

Notably, Gassner announced that Veeva is moving away from usage-based pricing for Vault AI and instead charging a fixed percentage of a customer’s existing Vault subscription. Vault AI will be priced at 10% of a customer’s Vault subscription (5% in year one), with unlimited usage and no token-based fees, in an effort to make enterprise AI adoption predictable, scalable, and easier for life sciences companies to budget and deploy.

Veeva Falcon

In addition to Vault AI, earlier this year, Veeva unveiled Veeva Falcon, a separate external platform delivering “agentic labor,” or autonomous digital workers, that perform routine tasks so employees can focus on higher-value work. Gassner explained how Falcon Agents can autonomously handle tasks such as clinical document intake and classification, trial master file processing, health authority inquiry management, clinical study report drafting, and safety processing. Gassner expressed excitement, but also emphasized that Falcon is still very early. According to him, it’s still in early adopter mode, but it’s moving fast.

Veeva’s Vision for the Future

Gassner’s keynote was less about individual product announcements and more about presenting Veeva’s vision for the next decade: an increasingly connected life sciences ecosystem powered by standardized cloud applications and deeply embedded AI. AI, particularly agentic AI, appears poised to become the centerpiece of that strategy.