Lilly and NVIDIA open a joint AI lab after building a drug-discovery supercomputer
Eli Lilly and NVIDIA are spending up to $1 billion over five years on a joint AI lab to speed up drug discovery, built on a supercomputer the companies call the most powerful in the pharmaceutical industry [1].
Eli Lilly and NVIDIA announced on Jan. 12, 2026, that they are opening a joint AI "co-innovation lab" aimed at reinventing how new medicines are found and made [1]. The announcement came at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, where the companies said they will jointly invest up to $1 billion over five years in talent, computing infrastructure and research [1].
The lab will be based in the San Francisco Bay Area and is expected to start work in South San Francisco early this year [1]. It will place Lilly's scientists in biology, chemistry and medicine alongside NVIDIA's AI model builders and engineers, using the NVIDIA BioNeMo software platform and NVIDIA's newer Vera Rubin computing architecture [1]. The two companies said the goal is a "continuous learning system" that links Lilly's automated wet labs, where physical experiments happen, with computer-based dry labs, so that AI models and lab results can improve each other around the clock [1].
This new lab builds on a supercomputer, described as an "AI factory," that Lilly had already announced [1]. The companies say that system is the most powerful computing setup dedicated to pharmaceutical research in the industry [1]. It is meant to train large biomedical AI models that can identify, refine and test new drug candidates faster, and it is also expected to support work on manufacturing, medical imaging and AI-driven lab tools [1].
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's founder and CEO, said the partnership is meant to let scientists "explore vast biological and chemical spaces in silico before a single molecule is made" [1]. Lilly chair and CEO David Ricks said combining Lilly's data and scientific knowledge with NVIDIA's computing power "could reinvent drug discovery as we know it" [1]. Beyond finding new drugs, the companies said they plan to use robotics and digital simulations, through NVIDIA Omniverse and RTX PRO servers, to build digital models of Lilly's manufacturing lines so they can test changes to production and supply chains before making them in real factories [1].
The source material for this announcement does not spell out exactly how the $1 billion investment is being financed, so it is not yet known whether or how much of the funding is tied specifically to revenue from Lilly's incretin-based medicines, such as Mounjaro or Zepbound (tirzepatide).
Why it matters for patients
This deal is about the tools used to discover and manufacture future medicines, not about any specific drug people are taking today. Patients on GLP-1 medicines like Ozempic, Wegovy, Rybelsus (semaglutide), Mounjaro, Zepbound (tirzepatide), or the newer Foundayo (orforglipron) will not see any immediate change from this announcement.
The stated goal is faster, more efficient identification of new drug candidates and improved manufacturing reliability, which the companies say could help address supply issues for high-demand medicines [1]. But turning lab and computing advances into approved treatments, or into steadier supply of existing ones, takes years and depends on separate clinical trials and regulatory reviews that this announcement does not address.
What happens next
The co-innovation lab's work is expected to begin in South San Francisco early in 2026 [1]. The companies did not give a timeline in this release for when any specific drug candidates or manufacturing changes might result from the lab's work, so those milestones are not yet known.
Sources
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