Roche Scales Up with NVIDIA AI Factory to Fast-track Drug Discovery & Diagnostics

The AI factory functions as a supercomputing platform supporting multiple applications across research, manufacturing, and clinical operations.

Roche has expanded its artificial intelligence capabilities through a large-scale collaboration with NVIDIA, launching a hybrid-cloud AI factory powered by more than 3,500 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to speed up drug discovery, diagnostics, and healthcare innovation.

With the addition of 2,176 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs across the United States and Europe, combined with cloud infrastructure, Roche now operates the pharmaceutical industry’s largest announced hybrid-cloud AI factory, totalling more than 3,500 GPUs.

The initiative builds on a strategic partnership between Roche and NVIDIA that began in 2023, when both companies combined their expertise in biology, data science, and accelerated computing to enhance drug discovery.

“In healthcare, time is the most critical variable; every day saved means a life-changing medicine or diagnostic reaches a patient sooner,” said Wafaa Mamilli, Roche’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer.

“Our AI factory combines world-class computing power with Roche’s scientific expertise to embed AI across the entire value chain — from discovery to development, manufacturing and commercialisation — transforming how we deliver the next generation of medicines and diagnostics solutions,” she added.

The AI factory functions as a supercomputing platform supporting multiple applications across research, manufacturing, and clinical operations.

In research and development, NVIDIA’s BioNeMo platform enhances Roche’s “Lab-in-the-Loop” model by connecting experimental biology and chemistry workflows directly with AI models, enabling large-scale hypothesis testing.

In manufacturing, digital twins powered by NVIDIA Omniverse simulate production environments to optimize efficiency and design.

For diagnostics and pathology, accelerated computing and Parabricks software help analyze vast datasets and detect subtle disease patterns. The company is also using NeMo Guardrails to ensure safe deployment of healthcare-grade conversational AI.

“Our expanded collaboration with NVIDIA and the launch of this AI factory further strengthen our leadership in AI-driven drug discovery and development,” said Aviv Regev, Executive Vice President and Head of Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED).

“By providing the massive computational power needed to continue to scale our Lab-in-the-Loop strategy — a space we have pioneered for over five years — our scientists can build more sophisticated predictive frontier models and further shorten the path from biological insight to life-saving medicine,” she added.

Stay tuned for more such updates on Digital Health News