NVIDIA and Eli Lilly have jointly committed approximately $1 billion (equivalent to around RMB 6.988 billion) over the next five years to establish a cutting-edge collaborative research lab in the San Francisco Bay Area, U.S. This state-of-the-art facility will leverage NVIDIA's advanced Vera Rubin architecture AI chips to propel biomedical research into uncharted territories, with the ambitious goal of revolutionizing the drug development landscape. Previously, Eli Lilly had outlined plans to construct a supercomputer utilizing over 1,000 NVIDIA chips. This latest partnership marks a significant leap forward in the pharmaceutical industry's broader trend of rapidly integrating AI technology to expedite the discovery and development of novel therapeutics.

While the precise breakdown of financial investments and whether NVIDIA will contribute chips as in-kind funding remains undisclosed, the tech giant has pledged to provide open-source models and software tools to empower pharmaceutical research. In a parallel move, on the same day as the partnership announcement, NVIDIA also introduced a groundbreaking new AI model. The exact location of the new research lab is anticipated to be revealed in March, at which point researchers from both NVIDIA and Eli Lilly will commence collaborative efforts to generate innovative data and insights.