BMS expands AI footprint with Nvidia, aiming for ‘most powerful AI factory in life sciences’

Biotech BMS expands AI footprint with Nvidia, aiming for ‘most powerful AI factory in life sciences’ By Marissa Russo Jul 20, 2026 10:30am Bristol Myers Squibb Artificial Intelligence NVIDIA AI and Machine Learning Bristol Myers Squibb has touted its strengthened collaboration with Nvidia as aiming to build the “most powerful AI factory in life sciences.” The Big Pharma will expand its infrastructure to deploy supercomputer called the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD that is enabled with AIDGX Vera Rubin NVL72 systems. The result will be the “most powerful and energy-efficient single-owned Nvidia infrastructure in life sciences,” BMS claimed in a July 20 release. “BMS has made a deliberate bet on AI, and we are beginning to see it pay off in our pipeline and operations,” BMS Chief Digital and Technology Officer Greg Meyers said in the release. The expansion builds on a three-year collaboration that began when BMS first deployed NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD infrastructure to support its R&D activities. The pharma's other recent AI collaborations have included deals with Anthropic’s Claude to advance R&D, and Microsoft to help speed up lung cancer diagnoses. A spokesperson for BMS told Fierce this morning that the company “view[s] these investments as complementary components of a broader AI strategy.” BMS has been using these investments to help discover and develop medicines across multiple disease areas. The latest Nvidia agreement “advances BMS’ vision of hybrid intelligence, a model of scientific work where AI co-scientists and human researchers operate in close coordination,” the company said in today's release. In practice, this means creating an infrastructure where scientists “spend less time on manual work and more time on the questions that require human judgment,” BMS Chief Research Officer Robert Plenge said in the release. “The goal isn't speed for its own sake; it's raising the probability that each program we advance is the right one.” Nvidia is increasingly in demand by Big Pharmas, including establishing an AI co-innovation lab with Lilly that came with a commitment to collectively invest $1 billion over five years. Meanwhile, Roche announced a “hybrid-cloud AI factory”, designed to accelerate R&D for new therapeutics and diagnostics. Netherlands-based Qiagen also joined the AI front with Nvidia to allow researchers to have the upper hand in drug discovery. Bristol Myers Squibb Artificial Intelligence NVIDIA AI and Machine Learning Biotech