On Tuesday Eli Lilly and Nvidia announced a strategic partnership to create the most powerful supercomputer ever designed in the pharmaceutical industry, as well as an "artificial intelligence factory" to accelerate the discovery and development of new treatments. The project, which is expected to be finalized in December and operational in January, will be based on over 1,000 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs interconnected within an infrastructure operated by Eli Lilly. This aims to reduce the time and cost of the drug development cycle, currently estimated at ten years between initial clinical trials and commercialization.

Nvidia closed up 5%, while Eli Lilly closed down almost 1%.

According to Eli Lilly, this infrastructure will enable millions of virtual experiments to be conducted in parallel and new molecules to be identified using large-scale AI models. "This supercomputer is a unique scientific instrument, a giant microscope for biologists," explained Thomas Fuchs, the group's AI director. The initiative is part of a broader open strategy with the Lilly TuneLab platform, launched in September, which offers biotech companies access to AI models based on several years of research and a billion dollars' worth of proprietary data.

This project marks a key step in the convergence of technology and healthcare. Eli Lilly plans to use this computing power not only for drug discovery, but also to optimize clinical trials and develop precision medicine. "Without a robust AI infrastructure, personalized medicine cannot become a reality," said Kimberly Powell, vice president of healthcare at Nvidia. Through this alliance, the two companies intend to make artificial intelligence a major lever for transforming biomedical research and accelerating access to treatments tailored to each patient.