Eli Lilly builds an AI hub and partners with small biotechs

In short: Eli Lilly is using money from its weight-loss drugs to fund an AI-based drug research hub and work with smaller biotech companies.

What happened

Eli Lilly said it is putting more of its growing cash pile into new ways to develop medicines. The company is doing this as it looks ahead to the 2030s, when patents on its biggest weight-loss drugs are expected to expire.

One major step is a new data center, which is basically a building full of powerful computers. Lilly said it installed 1,016 advanced Blackwell chips from Nvidia, which are specialized parts used to run artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Lilly also started a collaboration with about 100 smaller biotech companies. CEO Dave Ricks told the Financial Times the setup is “like the App Store” for scientists, meaning researchers can plug into shared tools instead of building everything from scratch (like downloading apps instead of writing your own software). In exchange for access to AI models, participating companies provide data. Ricks said the data is shared anonymously, and Lilly’s own scientists use the models too.

Separately, Lilly has signed about 20 deals to license AI technology, and it announced a $2 billion deal with Insilico Medicine for rights to sell a potential GLP-1 drug if it is developed and approved. GLP-1 drugs are a class of medicines used for diabetes and weight loss.

Why it matters

For regular people, this is about how new medicines get made and how long that can take. Lilly is betting that better computer tools and more data sharing could help researchers find promising drug ideas sooner, even though the company says AI drug discovery is still early and unproven.

Source: Financial Times