Key Takeaways

  • Eli Lilly and Nvidia partner to build the pharmaceutical industry’s most powerful AI supercomputer.
  • The collaboration aims to speed up drug discovery and reduce development costs.
  • Significant outcomes from this AI investment are expected to emerge around 2030.

Eli Lilly recently partnered with Nvidia to build the pharmaceutical industry’s “most powerful” supercomputer and AI factory to quicken drug discovery and development efforts across the biopharma sector.

Accelerating Drug Discovery Through AI

This strategic partnership aims to harness AI to shorten the time it takes to bring therapies to patients while cutting costs at every step of drug discovery and development. On average, it takes approximately 10 years from dosing the first human with a drug to its market launch, and the length of this process has remained the same for many years; it is essential to reduce timings wherever possible.

Timeline and Expected Impact

Eli Lilly anticipates that the completed buildout of the supercomputer and AI factory will be in December. They will go online in January 2026. However, the new technology is not expected to yield significant returns for the company until the end of the decade.

Diogo Rau, Chief Information and Digital Officer at Eli Lilly, reiterated this point: “The things that we’re talking about discovering with this kind of power that we have right now, we’re really going to see those benefits in 2030.”

AI in Drug Development: The Bigger Picture

Although there are no drugs on the market designed using AI to date, the number of AI-discovered drugs entering clinical trials is booming, indicating the progress of AI and a growing number of AI-focused investments and partnerships among drugmakers.

Technical Details of the Supercomputer

Eli Lilly will own and operate the supercomputer, which will be powered by more than 1,000 Blackwell Ultra GPUs, a newer family of chips from Nvidia connected on a unified, high-speed network. The supercomputer will power the AI factory, a specialised computing infrastructure that will develop, train, and deploy AI models at scale for drug discovery and development.

Nvidia’s Perspective on Precision Medicine

Kimberly Powell, the Vice President of Health Care at Nvidia, said: “We would actually like to deliver on that promise of precision medicine. Without an AI infrastructure and foundation, we’ll never get there, right? So we’re doing all of the necessary building, and now we’re seeing this true lift off, and Lilly is an exact example of that.”

References

https://www.lilly.com/news/stories/new-supercomputer-could-change-future-medicine

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/28/eli-lilly-nvidia-supercomputer-ai-factory-drug-discovery.html