Lilly and Nvidia Partner for $1 Billion AI Drug Discovery Lab
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
In a landmark collaboration, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company has teamed up with Nvidia to launch a first-of-its-kind co-innovation AI lab. The two companies have committed to jointly investing up to $1 billion over the next five years to support the initiative's talent, infrastructure, and computing needs. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, the facility is expected to begin operations early this year, specifically by late March.
The primary objective of the lab is to accelerate drug discovery by integrating Lilly’s pharmaceutical expertise with Nvidia’s leadership in accelerated computing and AI infrastructure. The lab will be built upon the Nvidia BioNeMo platform and will utilize the next-generation Vera Rubin architecture. By combining these resources, the companies aim to create a "continuous learning system" that connects physical "wet" labs with computational "dry" labs, enabling 24/7 AI-assisted experimentation.
Beyond initial research, the partnership plans to apply agentic and multimodal AI across various operations, including clinical development and commercial scaling. The lab will also focus on:
Scaling production through the use of robotics and physical AI.
Creating digital twins of manufacturing lines using Nvidia Omniverse to optimize supply chains.
Training large-scale biomedical foundation models to identify and validate new molecules with unprecedented speed.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang noted that this collaboration provides a blueprint for a future where scientists can explore billions of biological possibilities "in silico" before a single physical molecule is ever manufactured. This move follows Lilly's previous announcement to build a massive supercomputer and mirrors a growing trend among drugmakers, such as Pfizer, who are increasingly turning to AI to reduce the time and cost of bringing new treatments to market.
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Keywords: AI drug discovery lab
AI drug discovery lab
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