A growing share of pharmaceutical innovation is now constrained not by scientific imagination, but by the infrastructure required to support AI at scale. In this episode of the AI in Business podcast, Thomas Fuchs, Chief AI Officer at Eli Lilly &amp; Company, joins Matthew DeMello to explore how Lilly&#x27;s new AI supercomputing platform is reshaping scientific discovery and enterprise operations. The conversation examines how large-scale computing enables more advanced models, secure and usable data environments, and faster scientific iteration across the organization. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner

Scaling Scientific R&amp;D with AI Supercomputing Infrastructure — with Thomas Fuchs of Eli Lilly

The AI in Business Podcast

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** The AI in Business Podcast

## Transcript

[SPEAKER_A] Welcome everyone to the Emerj AI in Business podcast. Today's guest is Thomas Fuchs, Chief AI Officer at Eli Lilly Company. Thomas joins Emerj's Matthew DeMello to explain how Eli Lilly is building an AI-ready supercomputing platform to strengthen discovery, development, and manufacturing. He describes how large-scale compute lets researchers work with bigger models, use decades of experimental results, and explore a wider range of potential molecules. He also outlines where this is already changing scientific work, from cutting down unnecessary lab experiments to improving early prediction of molecular properties and speeding key manufacturing steps. Just a quick note for our audience that the views expressed by Thomas Fuchs on today's program do not reflect that of Eli Lilly or its leadership. Do you sell AI products or services? Emerj gives you access through trusted content and real conversations organizations. Learn how leading AI brands like NVIDIA and Google Cloud work with Emerj to reach Fortune 500 AI buyers. Download our media kit at go.emerj.com/partner. That's go.emerj.com/partner. Now, the conversation with Thomas.

[SPEAKER_B] Thomas, thank you so much for being with us on today's show.

[SPEAKER_C] Thank you for having me, Matt. It's really a pleasure to be with you.

[SPEAKER_B] Absolutely. We're seeing pharmaceutical leaders really pushing AI in a lot of different spaces. We've seen things like digital twins at places like Pfizer. I think these are moving from not just what's front-facing for customers, but now the thought is moving more towards the infrastructure of the very company itself. And a lot of pharmaceutical enterprises have proven that AI can generate value in research and development in very, very, very incremental ways. But scaling those gains has exposed a much harder problem. Most legacy infrastructure was never designed to support that large-scale parallel scientific discovery. For Eli Lilly, and a great pleasure having you on the show to give us an inside look at this, but you're launching a new AI supercomputing platform meant for solving for performance, security, and organizational alignment all at the same time while ensuring the technology could support real scientific rigor, not just faster experiments. We're talking today about how Lilly approached those different challenges and why AI infrastructure is becoming a core strategic capability rather than a background IT decision. But just to start off, how is Eli Lilly defining the strategic purpose of the supercomputer within its broader digital and AI transformation roadmap?

[SPEAKER_C] So Matt, as you know, of course we are in very interesting times because AI by now is in everybody's language and everybody's mind. I do have a PhD in machine learning from a time when it was not cool yet, so it's very, very nice to see the world change. And to that end, of course, it to...

Scaling Scientific R&D with AI Supercomputing Infrastructure — with Thomas Fuchs of Eli Lilly

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Scaling Scientific R&amp;D with AI Supercomputing Infrastructure — with Thomas Fuchs of Eli Lilly

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Scaling Scientific R&D with AI Supercomputing Infrastructure — with Thomas Fuchs of Eli Lilly

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.