4 November 2025 · 1 min read
Pharma used to rent compute. Eli Lilly and Company just bought the factory.
Eli Lilly just moved from renting compute to owning it — 1,000+ Blackwell B300 GPUs in an on-prem DGX SuperPOD in Indianapolis. Their TuneLab initiative could turn R&D IT from a cost center into a deal channel, and it's further proof that pharma is finally taking AI seriously.
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Last updated
6 May 2026
Pharma used to rent compute. Eli Lilly and Company just bought the factory.
More than 1,000 Blackwell B300 GPUs in an on-prem DGX SuperPOD, in Indianapolis, running on renewables.
The other story here is TuneLab: selected biotechs get Lilly's models at no cost, Lilly gets their data back, privacy kept via federation.
If this flies (and that's a big if), "R&D IT" turns into a deal channel, not a cost center.
That said, I find this approach truly intriguing by Lilly and it is further proof that Pharma is finally starting to take AI seriously, and is even willing to re-think discovery business models.