Nvidia Partners with Lilly for $1 Billion Investment to Establish AI Drug Discovery Institute

Nvidia to Utilize "BioNeMo" Platform
OpenAI Acquires Medical Startup

Nvidia is establishing an artificial intelligence (AI) drug discovery institute in partnership with Eli Lilly.

On January 12 (local time), Nvidia announced at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference that it will join forces with pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly to establish an AI drug discovery institute. The two companies will jointly invest up to 1 billion dollars (approximately 1.4 trillion won) over the next five years.

EPA Yonhap News

The institute will be located in the San Francisco Bay Area, United States, and will be staffed by scientists, AI developers, and engineers from both companies. It will utilize Nvidia's "BioNeMo" as its core platform. The institute is planned to operate based on Nvidia's next-generation AI chip, "Vera Rubin," which was unveiled earlier this month.

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, stated, "AI is transforming every industry, but its deepest impact will be in life sciences." He added, "We will present a new blueprint that enables vast exploration of biological and chemical domains through computer simulations before creating actual molecules." The two companies plan to apply AI not only to drug development but also to manufacturing and overall operations.

Recently, OpenAI, which launched its "ChatGPT Health" feature, decided to acquire the medical AI app startup "Thatch." Thatch possesses technology that integrates and analyzes individuals' health data scattered across medical systems and Apple's Health app, among others.

OpenAI stated on social networking services (SNS), "By combining Thatch with ChatGPT Health, a new path has opened for understanding and managing health."

Previously, OpenAI released "ChatGPT Health," which allows users to understand their recent test results based on their own health data. Anthropic also recently added health management features to its AI chatbot "Claude."

In contrast, The Guardian recently reported that Google has removed the "AI Overview" feature from appearing at the top of Google Search for certain health-related queries. This action was taken in response to criticism that the AI Overview provided inaccurate information regarding health topics such as liver disease.