Nvidia Corp (NVDA) and Eli Lilly and Co (LLY) are joining forces to build something that sounds like science fiction but is very much happening right now: a lab that uses artificial intelligence to design new drugs.
The partnership brings together two things that are actually useful when combined—Lilly's deep knowledge of biology, medicine, and manufacturing with Nvidia's expertise in AI computing and infrastructure. The goal is to generate massive amounts of biological data and build AI models powerful enough to compress the timeline from early research to actual medicines people can use.
The five-year initiative is backed by $1 billion in investment and will be based in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the heart of the operation is NVIDIA BioNeMo, which will serve as the core platform for developing these AI models.
Here's where it gets interesting: the teams are building what they call a continuous learning system that links Lilly's physical wet labs with computational dry labs. Think of it as creating a feedback loop where experiments in the real world immediately inform AI models, which then suggest new experiments to run.
This isn't starting from scratch. The collaboration builds on an AI supercomputer that Lilly announced last fall, which is designed to train large biomedical models for identifying and validating new drug molecules. The new lab will incorporate next-generation NVIDIA architectures, including NVIDIA Vera Rubin, to push things even further.
Beyond drug discovery, the AI factory will support applications in manufacturing and medical imaging—basically touching multiple stages of getting medicines from concept to patients.
Lilly is also opening up some of its AI capabilities to others through Lilly TuneLab, a machine learning platform that gives biotech companies access to select Lilly models for drug discovery. As part of a future workflow offering, TuneLab will include NVIDIA Clara open foundation models for life sciences.
The lab is expected to begin operations early this year.
In unrelated news, France's finance ministry confirmed it hasn't been approached about a potential acquisition of Abivax SA (ABVX). French approval would be required for any transaction involving a strategic pharmaceutical asset.
Price Action: LLY stock was down 0.39% at $1,076.80 at the last check on Tuesday.