“The healthcare industry is adopting artificial intelligence (AI) at a pace three times faster than the overall U.S. industrial average. AI will completely transform the paradigm of the pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) industry, which is worth about USD 300 billion (approximately KRW 442 trillion).”

NVIDIA has signaled an “AI boom” in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology by announcing that it will join forces with Eli Lilly, the largest U.S. pharmaceutical company, to establish an AI drug discovery lab. Kimberly Powell, Vice President of Healthcare & Life Sciences at NVIDIA, made this announcement on the 12th (local time) at the “JP Morgan Healthcare Conference (JPMHC)” held at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, USA.

JPMHC, which runs for four days from this day, is the world’s largest pharmaceutical and biotech investment event. With more than 1,500 pharmaceutical and biotech companies and over 8,000 industry participants in attendance, the dominant theme at this venue, which showcases the 2026 trends in the pharmaceutical and biotech sector, was clearly “AI.”

As hundreds of stakeholders crowded in to hear NVIDIA’s announcement, Powell revealed that the company will establish an “AI Joint Innovation Lab” with Eli Lilly, the world’s largest pharmaceutical and biotech company by market capitalization. The two companies stated that they will invest USD 1 billion (approximately KRW 1.46 trillion) over five years in infrastructure construction and talent recruitment for this initiative. The lab will also be equipped with “Vera Rubin,” NVIDIA’s latest graphics processing unit (GPU), which the company will begin supplying in the second half of this year (July–December). The lab is scheduled to be established in the San Francisco Bay Area by the end of March. NVIDIA also announced that it has formed a partnership with global medical device company Thermo Fisher Scientific for AI-based laboratory automation.

The core of the collaboration between NVIDIA and the two companies is experimental automation through “simulation.” In her presentation, Powell stated, “The ‘ChatGPT moment’ is now happening in ‘physical AI’ as well,” emphasizing that physical AI can bring tremendous advances in the bio field. While many companies have so far focused on developing AI for discovering new drug candidates, NVIDIA’s strategy is to automate the entire experimental process itself, significantly saving time and cost. Citing the example of Multiply Labs, a biotech manufacturing automation company that uses NVIDIA’s AI platform, Powell said, “We reduced the manufacturing cost of a cell therapy product from USD 100,000 (approximately KRW 100 million) to USD 30,000, a cut of more than 70%.”

Alliances between biotech companies and AI firms are spreading across the pharmaceutical and biotech industry as a whole. On the same day at JPMHC, Novartis also announced plans to strengthen its collaboration with Isomorphic Labs, an AI drug discovery startup spun off from Google DeepMind. Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, said, “AI has become a standard tool for optimizing drug candidates.” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla also stated, “It is extremely important to extend AI across our entire business,” adding that “AI has made a major contribution to helping us reduce costs by USD 5.6 billion (approximately KRW 8.22 trillion).”

Among domestic biotech companies, Samsung Biologics has also established an “AI Lab” under its bio research institute. John Rim, CEO of Samsung Biologics, recently visited “CES 2026” and said that the company’s goal is to introduce manufacturing AI to build its domestic and overseas production plants into advanced digital factories.

Meanwhile, OpenAI has acquired healthcare startup Torch for USD 60 million (approximately KRW 88.4 billion). Torch is a platform that consolidates and provides patients’ health data in one place. OpenAI previously launched its “ChatGPT Health” service.

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