Lilly, NVIDIA Partner to Build AI Supercomputer for Drug Discover

Eli Lilly announced on Tuesday that it is partnering with NVIDIA to create a supercomputer aimed at expediting drug discovery and reducing development timelines, thereby allowing the company to provide medications to patients more swiftly.

With this cutting-edge supercomputing infrastructure, Lilly scientists will have the capability to train AI models on millions of experimental data points to evaluate potential medications, greatly enhancing the breadth and efficiency of the company’s drug discovery initiatives.

Several of these proprietary AI models will be accessible through Lilly TuneLab, a federated artificial intelligence and machine learning platform that enables biotechnology firms to utilize drug discovery models developed from years of Lilly’s research data.

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This federated method is designed to preserve privacy, allowing biotechs to benefit from Lilly’s AI expertise without directly revealing their own or Lilly’s proprietary information.

In addition to discovery, Lilly intends to employ the supercomputer to speed up drug development processes. Other potential uses include optimizing manufacturing, enhancing medical imaging, and deploying enterprise AI agents, as stated by the company. Pharmaceutical developers are increasingly integrating AI technologies for drug discovery and safety testing to achieve quicker, more cost-efficient outcomes aligning with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s goal to minimize animal testing in the foreseeable future.

“Lilly is shifting from using AI as a tool to embracing it as a scientific collaborator,” said Thomas Fuchs, Senior Vice President and Chief AI Officer at Lilly.