Major Platform Expansion Introduces Advanced AI Models and Industry Collaborations
At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, NVIDIA unveiled a transformative expansion of NVIDIA BioNeMo™, an open development platform that fundamentally changes how pharmaceutical companies approach drug discovery and biological research. This announcement represents a pivotal moment in the convergence of artificial intelligence and life sciences, promising to accelerate breakthrough discoveries while dramatically reducing the astronomical costs of drug development.
Understanding the BioNeMo Platform Evolution
The life sciences industry faces an unprecedented challenge: managing and extracting value from massive volumes of scientific data while controlling R&D costs that currently total approximately $300 billion annually. NVIDIA BioNeMo addresses this challenge by providing a comprehensive development ecosystem that enables researchers to generate, process, train, optimize, and deploy AI models specifically designed for biological applications.
The expanded BioNeMo platform now includes groundbreaking capabilities that push the boundaries of computational biology. New NVIDIA Clara™ open models feature the RNAPro model for accurate RNA structure prediction and the ReaSyn v2 model, which ensures AI-designed drug molecules are practically synthesizable in real-world laboratory settings. These additions complement BioNeMo Recipes, which streamline the acceleration and scaling of biological foundation model training, customization, and deployment across research organizations.
Furthermore, the platform incorporates sophisticated data processing libraries such as nvMolKit, a GPU-accelerated cheminformatics tool that enables researchers to design molecular structures with unprecedented speed and accuracy. This computational power transforms raw experimental data into actionable intelligence, creating continuous learning cycles that inform each subsequent experiment.
Lilly and NVIDIA Launch Landmark Co-Innovation Laboratory
In a groundbreaking collaboration, Eli Lilly and Company partnered with NVIDIA to establish a first-of-its-kind co-innovation lab dedicated to solving persistent drug discovery challenges. This partnership combines NVIDIA’s expertise in accelerated computing, artificial intelligence, and robotics with Lilly’s world-class drug discovery and development capabilities.
The collaboration builds upon Lilly’s existing NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD™ and AI factory infrastructure, currently the most powerful computing system in the biopharmaceutical industry. The new initiative extends beyond this foundation, incorporating investments in next-generation NVIDIA architectures, including the advanced Vera Rubin system. Lilly commits to investing up to $1 billion over five years in talent acquisition, infrastructure development, and computational resources.
“We see this as a catalyst for the capabilities that will define the next era of drug discovery,” explained Diogo Rau, executive vice president and chief information and digital officer at Lilly. “By working with NVIDIA, we’re uniting massive compute, specialized talent and the ability to shape data at immense scale. We’re moving toward a future where discovery is driven by rapid experimentation and increasingly customized models.”
This partnership aims to support Lilly chemists and biologists with agentic laboratory systems powered by NVIDIA BioNeMo, while exploring opportunities to apply accelerated computing and advanced AI throughout Lilly’s entire business ecosystem, from manufacturing operations to commercial activities.
Thermo Fisher Collaboration Enables Autonomous Laboratory Infrastructure
NVIDIA’s collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific targets the transformation of traditional research laboratories into intelligent, automated data factories capable of scalable scientific discovery. This partnership integrates NVIDIA’s comprehensive AI computing stack with Thermo Fisher’s industry-leading instrumentation technology.
The collaboration focuses on three critical areas: implementing unified edge-to-cloud AI compute through NVIDIA DGX Spark™ desktop supercomputers, developing multi-agent systems using NVIDIA NeMo™ software for laboratory orchestration, and establishing autonomous data analysis capabilities through integrated BioNeMo tools. These innovations enable real-time interpretation of instrument outputs, dramatically accelerating the transition from raw experimental data to actionable scientific insights.
“Artificial intelligence coupled with laboratory automation will transform how scientific work is performed,” stated Gianluca Pettitti, executive vice president of Thermo Fisher Scientific. “By combining Thermo Fisher’s leadership in laboratory technologies with NVIDIA’s AI solutions, we can help customers work faster, improve accuracy and get more value out of each experiment, ultimately accelerating discoveries that can have significant human impact.”
Expanding Ecosystem of AI-Powered Drug Discovery Innovators
A thriving global ecosystem of biotechnology companies and research organizations is leveraging the BioNeMo platform to revolutionize drug discovery processes. Basecamp Research introduced the EDEN family of AI models, including systems capable of precisely inserting large DNA segments—a breakthrough addressing long-standing challenges in genetic medicine. Boltz PBC launched Boltz Lab, a comprehensive software platform for AI-driven molecular design, while Chai Discovery accelerates biomolecular foundation model development and deployment.
Natera announced its proprietary AI foundation model platform built on extensive genomic and clinical cancer datasets. Additional organizations including Apheris, Dyno Therapeutics, OpenFold, and Terray Therapeutics have released models developed using BioNeMo’s capabilities.
The ecosystem extends to AI scientist platforms building domain-specific agents for scientific research. Edison Scientific released Kosmos, an autonomous discovery system capable of completing six months of research work overnight. TetraScience partnered with Thermo Fisher to advance interoperable AI workflows, integrating NVIDIA Nemotron™ models to extract scientific knowledge from complex visualizations. Other adopters include Benchling, CytoReason, HelixAI, and Potato.
Physical AI Connects Digital Systems to Real-World Laboratories
NVIDIA collaborates with robotics and laboratory automation companies to introduce simulation and physical AI technologies that bridge digital experimentation with real-world validation. Multiply Labs builds robotic digital twins using NVIDIA Isaac Sim™ framework, while Lila Sciences scales the scientific method through automated laboratories. HighRes Biosolutions leverages Isaac Sim for simulation-first lab automation design, and Opentrons Labworks trains robots for flexible operation beyond constrained environments.
Major pharmaceutical companies including Amgen and Roche have built digital twins using NVIDIA Omniverse™ libraries, bringing physical AI capabilities to laboratories and manufacturing facilities worldwide.
