Novo Nordisk has added another dimension to its artificial intelligence ambitions by signing up as a customer of Denmark’s first so-called “supercomputer.”
The supercomputer, named Gefion, was launched in Novo Nordisk’s hometown of Copenhagen. Gefion is based on NVIDIA’s DGX SuperPOD data center infrastructure platform and funding by a public-private partnership between the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark.
The new multiyear agreement will allow the Danish pharma to use Gefion’s computational power to “process vast datasets” with the aim of transforming the processes around drug discovery and development. Gefion is ranked as the twenty-first most powerful supercomputer in the world, according to Novo.
“Working alongside Novo Nordisk, we can use Gefion to redefine what is possible in drug research,” said Nadia Carlsten, Ph.D., CEO of the Danish Center for AI Innovation, which owns and operates the computer. “With Gefion's computational power, we can tackle the toughest R&D challenges, with the ultimate goal of delivering actionable insights that can shave months off development timelines and unlock new possibilities for pharmaceutical research and development.”
Lars Fogh Iversen, Ph.D., senior vice president of external and exploratory innovation at Novo Nordisk, said Gefion will allow the Wegovy maker to “tackle compute-heavy challenges, like AI-based protein engineering and biological models.”
“AI models can now be created and used to solve critical applied science problems," he continued. “We are still learning, but the opportunities are immense.”
The release didn’t specify whether Novo Nordisk would be paying to access Gefion, but the pharma hasn’t been shy about funding AI-focused initiatives recently, including committing up to $190 million in near-term payments—and billions on the back end—to apply Valo Health’s AI expertise to up to 20 programs.
Novo Nordisk’s chief scientific officer Marcus Schindler, Ph.D., told Fierce Biotech in March that creating a “structure that really allowed us to have data and AI penetrate everything that we do” was one reason behind a wide-ranging reordering of the company’s early-stage R&D capabilities.
Today's announcement also falls under a collaboration between Novo Nordisk and NVIDIA to find innovative AI use cases for drug discovery. Other examples will include the Big Pharma using NVIDIA’s BioNeMo generative AI platform for drug discovery and the Omniverse platform to create “physically accurate simulation environments for developing physical AI applications,” according to a separate release.
“The pharma industry is becoming a technology industry with every aspect of the value chain being reimagined with AI,” Rory Kelleher, senior director of business development for life sciences at NVIDIA, said. “AI Factories like DCAI's Gefion Supercomputer are the essential instrument to help companies like Novo Nordisk transform proprietary enterprise data into customized models and agents for biomedical research, drug discovery, and beyond.”