Bristol Myers Squibb is teaming up with chipmaker Nvidia to build what the drugmaker calls the most powerful artificial-intelligence system in the pharmaceutical industry.
The New Jersey-headquartered company said Monday it will construct "the most advanced and energy-efficient AI" supercomputer in the biopharma sector, according to Endpoints News. The move deepens an existing relationship between the two companies.
Endpoints News reported that Bristol Myers Squibb will be the first pharma company to take this particular step, though the full details of the arrangement were not spelled out in the announcement.
Business Wire, carrying the company's own release, framed the project as building "the most powerful AI factory in life sciences with Nvidia." The phrase "AI factory" is Nvidia's term for large, purpose-built computing systems designed to run heavy AI workloads.
Beyond the company's characterization of the system as the most advanced and energy-efficient in its field, the sources here do not detail the machine's cost, location, timeline, or the specific research tasks it will handle.
Why it matters: Drug discovery is slow and expensive, and pharmaceutical companies increasingly see AI as a way to speed up how they find and test new medicines. A major drugmaker committing to what it describes as the industry's most powerful AI system signals how central high-end computing — and Nvidia's hardware in particular — is becoming to the business of making drugs.