NVIDIA, Eli Lilly Plan Up to $1 Billion for AI Drug Lab

NVIDIA and Eli Lilly plan to invest up to $1 billion over five years in a South San Francisco AI lab aimed at accelerating drug discovery, manufacturing and related operations.

The initiative, announced Jan. 12, will bring Lilly scientists together with NVIDIA AI researchers and engineers. Its initial work will link Lilly’s automated “wet labs” with computational “dry labs” in a continuous-learning system designed for 24/7 AI-assisted experimentation.

The lab will use NVIDIA’s BioNeMo platform and planned Vera Rubin architecture to develop foundation and frontier models for biology and chemistry. The companies also plan to explore artificial intelligence, robotics and digital twins for clinical development, manufacturing and commercial operations.

The companies have not disclosed how much each will contribute, how much has already been spent or whether the full $1 billion commitment will be used.

“AI is transforming every industry, and its most profound impact will be in life sciences,” NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said.

Lilly Chair and CEO David A. Ricks said the partnership “could reinvent drug discovery as we know it.”

The project builds on Lilly’s AI supercomputer initiative announced in October 2025. That system is designed to include more than 1,000 NVIDIA B300 GPUs and support drug-discovery models, manufacturing applications and scientific AI agents.

The lab has conflicting listed start dates: early 2026 in one announcement and March 31, 2026, in another. No new medicine, clinical result or commercial product resulting from the collaboration has been disclosed.