# 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.

URL: https://www.ch-healthtech.com/insights/pharma-used-rent-compute-eli-lilly-company-just-bought-factory
Markdown: https://www.ch-healthtech.com/insights/pharma-used-rent-compute-eli-lilly-company-just-bought-factory.md
Published: 2025-11-04
Updated: 2026-05-06
Author: Christian Hein
Tags: technology/artificial-intelligence, industry/large-pharma, function/innovation-management, activity/partnership-alliance, technology/synthetic-data, function/strategic-planning, function/pre-clinical-research

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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.