Prime Highlights
- Bristol Myers becomes the first life sciences firm to buy Nvidia’s Vera Rubin-based SuperPOD.
- AI tools have already cut drug-making time for trials by 20% to 30%, executives said.
Key Facts
- Bristol Myers Squibb is a major US pharmaceutical company focused on drug discovery and development.
- Nvidia unveiled its Vera Rubin AI computing architecture earlier this year as its newest generation system.
Background
Bristol Myers Squibb said this week it is buying the latest-generation computing system from chip company Nvidia to support its use of artificial intelligence across drug discovery and development operations.
The drugmaker will become the first life sciences company to buy an Nvidia DGX SuperPOD based on its Vera Rubin systems. Nvidia unveiled the Vera Rubin architecture earlier this year as the successor to its current generation of AI computing systems.
Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed. The purchase builds on a smaller SuperPOD system the drugmaker had already bought from Nvidia, which is around two or three generations behind Vera Rubin, according to Bristol Myers executives.
Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly investing in AI infrastructure to identify drug targets faster and improve the odds that experimental drugs succeed in clinical trials.
Robert Plenge, chief research officer at Bristol Myers, said the new capabilities would let the company cycle through many more potential drug candidates early in the development process, moving from around ten candidates to potentially dozens.
Plenge added that the company is already using AI tools to cut the time needed to make medicines for trials by 20% to 30%, a figure he expects could reach 50% in coming years. He said an experimental sickle cell disease treatment currently in early clinical development would likely not have been discovered without AI-enabled research.
Greg Meyers, the company’s chief digital and technology officer, said the investment was driven partly by rapidly growing computing demands as Bristol deploys larger AI models. He noted the new system would also be significantly more energy efficient, offering far greater compute capacity per watt as electricity costs continue rising.
