Lilly Teams with Nvidia to Build AI Supercomputer for Drug Discovery

Pharma giant Eli Lilly has announced it is building the most powerful supercomputer owned and operated by a pharmaceutical company, in collaboration with Nvidia. The supercomputer will power an “AI factory,” a specialized computing infrastructure that manages the entire AI lifecycle. According to Kimberly Powell, vice president of health care at Nvidia, “Modern AI factories are becoming the new instrument of science — enabling the shift from trial-and-error discovery to a more intentional design of medicines.”

“Lilly’s mission is to make life better for people around the world, and today that requires excellence not just in science but also in technology,” said Diogo Rau, executive vice president and chief information and digital officer at Lilly. “I don’t believe any other company in our industry is doing what we do at this scale. As a 150-year-old medicine company, one of our most powerful assets is decades of data. With purpose-built AI models and AI, we can set a new scientific standard that accelerates innovation to deliver medicines to more patients, faster.”

The new supercomputer and AI factory enable rapid learning and iteration. Scientists will be able to train AI models on millions of experiments to test potential medicines, dramatically expanding the scope and sophistication of drug discovery efforts. A number of these proprietary AI models will be available on Lilly TuneLab, a collaborative federated AI/ML drug discovery platform created to expand access to advanced discovery tools across the biopharma ecosystem. TuneLab will continue evolving its suite of available models, including the addition of workflows that incorporate select Nvidia open-source models.

Beyond discovery, Lilly plans to leverage the supercomputer to shorten development cycles and help get medicines to people faster. New scientific AI agents can support researchers in reasoning, planning and collaborating across digital and physical environments. With advanced medical imaging, scientists benefit from a clearer view of how diseases progress and can develop new biomarkers for more personalized care. Manufacturing processes can benefit from digital twins together with Nvidia’s robotic technologies to improve production efficiency and reduce downtime. (Source: Eli Lilly Website, 28 October, 2025)