NVIDIA and Eli Lilly launch a $1 billion AI co-innovation lab in the San Francisco Bay Area to accelerate drug discovery, AI-driven experimentation, and pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Written By: Pharmacally Medical News Desk
NVIDIA and Eli Lilly and Company have announced a $1 billion AI co-innovation lab aimed at fundamentally transforming how new medicines are discovered, developed, and manufactured. The initiative represents one of the most ambitious collaborations to date at the intersection of artificial intelligence and pharmaceutical research.
The two companies plan to invest up to $1 billion over five years in talent, advanced computing infrastructure, and AI platforms to accelerate drug discovery and enable AI-driven experimentation across the pharmaceutical value chain.
A Co-Located AI Lab for Faster Drug Development
The AI co-innovation lab will be based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Lilly scientists specializing in biology, chemistry, and medicine will work side by side with NVIDIA’s AI researchers and engineers. This co-located model is designed to reduce handoffs between experimentation and computation, allowing faster iteration between laboratory data generation and AI model development.
By tightly integrating wet-lab experimentation with computational modeling, the collaboration aims to shorten development timelines and improve the quality of early drug candidates.
NVIDIA BioNeMo at the Core of the Platform
The collaboration will leverage NVIDIA BioNeMo™ as the core platform for building and deploying large-scale AI models tailored to biology and chemistry. Using high-quality proprietary data from Lilly and large-scale compute from NVIDIA, the teams plan to develop next-generation foundation and frontier models capable of navigating vast biological and chemical spaces before physical experiments begin.
According to Jensen Huang, AI has the potential to redefine life sciences by enabling scientists to explore and test hypotheses computationally at unprecedented scale, reducing reliance on costly and time-consuming trial-and-error approaches.
A Scientist-in-the-Loop AI Framework
A central focus of the collaboration is the creation of a continuous learning system that tightly connects AI-powered computational “dry labs” with Lilly’s experimental “wet labs.” In this scientist-in-the-loop framework, human experts actively guide, validate, and refine AI outputs, ensuring that experimental results continuously inform model training and optimization.
This approach is intended to support round-the-clock AI-assisted experimentation, where data generation, model development, and scientific decision-making operate as a single, integrated system.
Advanced Computing and AI Infrastructure
The initiative builds on Lilly’s previously announced AI supercomputer and includes planned investments in next-generation NVIDIA architectures, including NVIDIA Vera Rubin. Lilly’s AI factory, described as the most powerful in the pharmaceutical industry, will be used to train large biomedical models for identifying, optimizing, and validating novel drug candidates.
Beyond discovery, these capabilities are expected to support applications in clinical development, medical imaging, and scientific AI agents.
Applying AI Across Manufacturing and Supply Chains
In addition to drug discovery, NVIDIA and Lilly plan to expand AI applications across pharmaceutical manufacturing and operations. Using NVIDIA Omniverse™ libraries and NVIDIA RTX PRO™ Servers, Lilly will be able to create digital twins of manufacturing lines to simulate, stress test, and optimize production workflows before implementing physical changes.
The integration of physical AI, robotics, and simulation technologies is expected to enhance manufacturing efficiency, improve supply chain resilience, and support the production of high-demand medicines.
Building a Broader Biomedical AI Ecosystem
NVIDIA’s open-source AI ecosystem and its NVIDIA Inception program will support startups and researchers connected to the co-innovation lab by providing access to models, tools, mentorship, and computing resources.
Lilly’s TuneLab AI platform, which offers select drug discovery models built on decades of proprietary data, is expected to integrate NVIDIA Clara™ foundation models for life sciences in future workflows.
David A. Ricks stated that the collaboration combines Lilly’s scientific expertise and deep data assets with NVIDIA’s computational capabilities, creating an environment designed to achieve breakthroughs that would not be possible independently.
According to both companies, work at the AI co-innovation lab is expected to begin in South San Francisco early this year, marking a significant step toward embedding AI at the core of pharmaceutical innovation.
References
CEOs of NVIDIA and Lilly Share ‘Blueprint for What Is Possible’ in AI and Drug Discovery, 13 January 2026, https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/jpmorgan-healthcare-nvidia-lilly/
NVIDIA and Lilly Announce Co-Innovation AI Lab to Reinvent Drug Discovery In the Age of AI, 12 January 2026, NVIDIA and Lilly Announce Co-Innovation AI Lab to Reinvent Drug Discovery In the Age of AI | Eli Lilly and Company
Accelerating Drug Discovery Pipelines With AI, BioNeMo for Biopharma | Drug Discovery with Generative AI | NVIDIA
NVIDIA Omniverse, Develop Physical AI Applications | NVIDIA Omniverse
NVIDIA Clara, GitHub – NVIDIA/Clara: NVIDIA Clara Open Models
For Startups Building What’s Next in AI, Inception Program for Startups | NVIDIA
NVIDIA RTX PRO Server, RTX PRO Servers for Building Enterprise AI Factories | NVIDIA