Digital Event Horizon
Pharmaceutical company Lilly has successfully deployed the world's largest AI factory, powered by NVIDIA's most powerful GPUs, to revolutionize drug discovery and development. The facility features 1,016 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs, capable of delivering over 9,000 petaflops of AI performance.
Lilly has deployed the world's largest and most powerful AI factory, leveraging NVIDIA's DGX SuperPOD with DGX B300 systems. The facility is equipped with an impressive 1,016 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs, capable of delivering over 9,000 petaflops of AI performance. Lilly scientists can analyze entire genome sequences, predict patient outcomes, and explore biochemical possibilities using the AI factory's capabilities. The facility also enables the company to build large language models that accelerate clinical trials and internal workflows. The NVIDIA Mission Control software allows Lilly to manage its DGX SuperPOD, orchestrate workloads, and monitor performance securely and efficiently. The deployment of the AI factory marks a significant milestone in Lilly's commitment to expanding its U.S. manufacturing and R&D footprint. The facility aims to create 13,000 high-wage manufacturing and construction jobs, solidifying Lilly's position as an AI-native U.S. and global pharma leader.
Lilly, a pharmaceutical company renowned for its contributions to medicine and innovation, has taken a groundbreaking step towards revolutionizing drug discovery and development. The company has successfully deployed the world's largest and most powerful AI factory, wholly owned and operated by a pharmaceutical company, utilizing NVIDIA's DGX SuperPOD with DGX B300 systems. This cutting-edge facility is equipped with an impressive 1,016 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs, capable of delivering over 9,000 petaflops of AI performance.
The AI factory is specifically designed to support modern scientific research using foundation models, as well as physical and agentic AI. Lilly scientists can leverage this powerful platform to analyze entire genome sequences, predict patient outcomes, and explore multitudes of biochemical possibilities. The facility's capabilities extend beyond drug discovery, enabling the company to build large language models that accelerate clinical trials by helping with medical writing and other internal workflows.
In addition to its impressive computational power, the AI factory also incorporates NVIDIA's full-stack AI factory architecture, which includes accelerated computing, NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking, and optimized AI software. This provides a secure, scalable, and purpose-built platform for the highly regulated healthcare and life sciences industries. The NVIDIA Mission Control software enables Lilly to manage its DGX SuperPOD, orchestrate workloads, monitor performance, and automate AI operations securely and efficiently across more than 1,000 GPUs.
The deployment of this AI factory marks a significant milestone in Lilly's commitment to expanding its U.S. manufacturing and R&D footprint. The company has already established four new facilities and is planning to construct a proposed $4.5 billion lab in Indiana, called the Lilly Medicine Foundry, for advanced manufacturing and drug development. This initiative aims to create 13,000 high-wage manufacturing and construction jobs, solidifying Lilly's position as an AI-native U.S. and global pharma leader.
Lilly's collaboration with NVIDIA is a cornerstone of its innovation blueprint, building on its $50 billion commitment to advancing its pharmaceutical research and development capabilities. The partnership enables the company to tap into powerful proprietary AI models while keeping its own data private and separate from other users. This federated learning infrastructure, built on NVIDIA FLARE, allows biotechs to benefit from the collective knowledge of a community-driven model, ultimately driving progress in drug discovery and development.
The impact of this new AI factory extends beyond Lilly's pharmaceutical operations. The facility is poised to enhance the company's capacity to manufacture high-demand medications, strengthen supply chain reliability, and accelerate quality assurance and other biomanufacturing operations. By leveraging NVIDIA Omniverse platform and RTX PRO Servers, Lilly can create digital twins of its manufacturing lines to model, stress-test, and optimize entire supply chains before making physical changes in the real world.
Digital twins can increase production safety while accelerating quality assurance and other biomanufacturing operations, ultimately getting medicines to patients faster. Lilly also utilizes robots in its factories for quality inspection and transport of goods, optimizing operations and keeping production lines up and running.
The AI factory's integration with NVIDIA Isaac platform enables Lilly to deploy intelligent robotics to modernize therapeutics production and support the workforce. NVIDIA Isaac Sim lets developers simulate and test AI-driven robotics solutions that can be adapted to pharma workflows. Moreover, using NVIDIA NeMo software, Lilly can create AI agents that can reason, plan, and act across digital and physical labs, with the goal of helping generate new molecules, design treatments in silico, and test them in vitro.
"Lilly is already ranked the No. 1 most AI-ready pharma company," said Thomas Fuchs, chief AI officer at Lilly. "Now, our new AI factory positions us as an AI-native U.S. and global pharma leader." Fuchs added that AI gives Lilly the means to accelerate progress toward developing and delivering better, more personalized, and targeted medicines.
Diogo Rau, executive vice president and chief information and digital officer at Lilly, stated, "If you focus only on science, you're just going to have an experiment, a paper or a treatment – but if you bring together science and technology, like the accelerated compute we're getting through this AI factory, you can reach a massive scale to bring the treatment to millions of people."
The deployment of Lilly's AI factory marks a significant milestone in the company's commitment to expanding its U.S. manufacturing and R&D footprint.
Related Information:
https://www.digitaleventhorizon.com/articles/Lilly-Unveils-Worlds-Largest-AI-Factory-for-Drug-Discovery-Powered-by-NVIDIAs-Most-Powerful-GPUs-deh.shtml
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/lilly-ai-factory-nvidia-blackwell-dgx-superpod/
Published: Tue Oct 28 16:26:43 2025 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
