Eli Lilly and Company revealed its construction of an AI supercomputer in collaboration with NVIDIA. According to the company, it is expected to be the most powerful supercomputer owned and operated by a pharmaceutical company.¹

The supercomputer is set to power an AI factory, a specialized computing infrastructure managing an 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."

What are the details of Lilly and NVIDIA’s supercomputer?

Lilly and NVIDIA’s supercomputer marks the world's first NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD with DGX B300 systems, and is powered by more than 1,000 B300 GPUs on a unified networking fabric, meaning communication across GPUs, storage, and related systems run on just one high-speed network.¹

The supercomputer paired with the AI factory enables rapid learning and iteration, and allows scientists the ability to train AI models on millions of experiments to test potential medicines, while also significantly expanding the scope and sophistication of drug discovery efforts.¹

A select amount of 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.¹

According to a press release from Lilly,TuneLab will continue expanding its suite of available models, including the addition of workflows that incorporate select NVIDIA Clara open-source models.

What are Lilly’s plans with the supercomputer?

Aside from using it for just drug discovery, Lilly plans to leverage the supercomputer to shorten development cycles, along with accelerating patient delivery times.¹

The supercomputer offers new scientific AI agents that support researchers in reasoning, planning, and collaborating across digital and physical environments. The supercomputer offers advanced medical imaging, which benefits scientists with a clear view of disease progression, along with holding the potential to develop new biomarkers for more personalized care.¹

Additionally, the supercomputer can benefit manufacturing processes when paired with digital twins, improving production efficiency and reducing 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’s chief AI officer makes statement

"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."

Sources

1. Lilly partners with NVIDIA to build the industry's most powerful AI supercomputer, supercharging medicine discovery and delivery for patients Eli Lilly and Company October 28, 2025 https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lilly-partners-with-nvidia-to-build-the-industrys-most-powerful-ai-supercomputer-supercharging-medicine-discovery-and-delivery-for-patients-302597285.html