Eli Lilly and Co. announced Tuesday it is partnering with Nvidia, a Silicon Valley-based artificial intelligence chipmaker, to create “the most powerful supercomputer owned and operated by a pharmaceutical company.”
The goal is to accelerate drug discovery and development.
The Indianapolis-based drugmaker said the supercomputer will power an “AI factory” that brings together Lilly’s proprietary data with advanced AI for capabilities such as analyzing genome sequences to designing, testing and optimizing new molecules to improving clinical trials.
The new supercomputer will use 1,016 Nvidia B300 GPUs—specialized processors called graphics processing units—designed for AI, machine learning and crunching massive amounts of data at high speeds.
Lilly, which did not disclose the project’s cost, said the units are arriving at its data center at the Lilly Technology Center in Indianapolis, with the supercomputer’s buildout expected to be completed this year and the system online by January.
“I don’t believe any other company in our industry is doing what we do at this scale,” Diogo Rau, Lilly chief information and digital officer, said in written remarks. “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 enables rapid learning and repeatability, allowing scientists to train AI models on millions of experiments to test potential medicines, according to Lilly.
What’s more, Lilly said the supercomputer will also help it with other tasks, such as scientific AI agents that will help researchers with reasoning, planning and collaboration. Other tasks include using advanced medical imaging to better understand diseases and using AI to improve manufacturing processes.
According to Nvidia, the supercomputer will enable large-scale biomedical foundation and frontier AI models, with select models made available on Lilly TuneLab—an AI and machine learning platform that provides biotech companies with access to drug-discovery models built on $1 billion worth of Lilly’s proprietary data.
“The AI industrial revolution will have its most profound impact on medicine, transforming how we understand biology,” Kimberly Powell, vice president of health care at Nvidia, said in written remarks.
When asked by IBJ about any potential future impact on jobs, Lilly spokesperson Kristen Porter Basu said the goal of the supercomputer is to empower scientists, engineers and technologists with advanced tools that enhance their work.
Lilly’s new supercomputer is designed to amplify human intelligence—not replace it,” she wrote in an email. “It’s about enabling our people to do more, think bigger, and deliver better outcomes for patients.”
Lilly said it is investing in workforce development to train teams to use the AI capabilities “responsibly and effectively, ensuring people remain at the center of innovation.”
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved.