Abu Dhabi: Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) today 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 from data ingestion and training to fine-tuning and high-volume inference.
“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 supercomputer is the world’s first NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD with DGX B300 systems. It is powered by more than 1,000 B300 GPUs on a unified networking fabric, which means communication across GPUs, storage and related systems runs on just one high-speed network.
Transforming science at scale for real-world impact
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 Clara 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.
“The AI industrial revolution will have its most profound impact on medicine, transforming how we understand biology,” said 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. With its deep scientific heritage and commitment to innovation, Lilly stands as a global leader at the forefront of this new era of medical discovery.”
“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. “By embedding intelligence into every layer of our workflows, we’re opening the door to a new kind of enterprise: one that learns, adapts and improves with every data point. This isn’t just about speed, but rather interrogating biology at scale, deepening our understanding of disease and translating that knowledge into meaningful advances for people served by Lilly medicines as well as the broader life sciences ecosystem.”
In accordance with Lilly’s existing sustainability commitments, including carbon neutrality by 2030, the supercomputer will run on 100% renewable electricity within existing Lilly facilities and use Lilly’s existing chilled water infrastructure for liquid cooling.
Lilly’s presentation, “Enterprise-Scale AI for Drug Discovery: Strategy, Infrastructure and Outcomes,” will take place today at NVIDIA’s AI conference GTC in Washington, D.C.
About Lilly
Lilly is a medicine company turning science into healing to make life better for people around the world. We’ve been pioneering life-changing discoveries for nearly 150 years, and today our medicines help tens of millions of people across the globe. Harnessing the power of biotechnology, chemistry and genetic medicine, our scientists are urgently advancing new discoveries to solve some of the world’s most significant health challenges: redefining diabetes care; treating obesity and curtailing its most devastating long-term effects; advancing the fight against Alzheimer’s disease; providing solutions to some of the most debilitating immune system disorders; and transforming the most difficult-to-treat cancers into manageable diseases. With each step toward a healthier world, we’re motivated by one thing: making life better for millions more people. That includes delivering innovative clinical trials that reflect the diversity of our world and working to ensure our medicines are accessible and affordable.