# How Lilly's AI Chief Built a Drug-Making Supercomputer

> Diogo Rau transformed Eli Lilly's approach to medicine by deploying AI and computing power at every stage of drug development.
- Title: How Lilly's AI Chief Built a Drug-Making Supercomputer · TIME
- Summary: Diogo Rau transformed Eli Lilly's approach to medicine by deploying AI and computing power at every stage of drug development. Pharmaceutical companies are…
- Keywords: eli lilly, diogo rau, artificial intelligence, drug discovery, supercomputer, nvidia blackwell, pharmaceutical manufacturing, digital transformation, computational biology, time executives of the year, Lilly's, Chief
- Source: TIME — https://time.com/collection/executives-of-the-year-tech-data/2026/diogo-rau
- Published: 2026-09-22T13:01:09+00:00
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: eli lilly, diogo rau, artificial intelligence, drug discovery, supercomputer, nvidia blackwell, pharmaceutical manufacturing, digital transformation, computational biology, time executives of the year
## Lilly's new supercomputer
Eli Lilly built LillyPod, an Nvidia-powered supercomputer with over 1,000 Blackwell GPUs, in just four months under chief information officer Diogo Rau's leadership.
## Screening molecules faster
LillyPod now models biological processes and screens potential drug molecules before they enter wet lab experiments, accelerating early-stage discovery.
## Manufacturing gets smarter
Rau's team built an AI digital twin of a production bottleneck, testing temperature and pressure variables virtually to shave minutes from critical processes.
## Real impact on output
The digital twin initiative enabled a very large increase in units produced, with enough material impact on earnings to justify the investment.
## The future of science
Rau believes drug-making itself is becoming computational, and that the shift will fundamentally change what being a scientist means in practice over the next decade.

> I don't think anybody thinks that in 10 years we'll have just as many scientists working in wet labs.
## Key takeaway

Pharmaceutical companies are shifting drug discovery and manufacturing from wet labs to computational systems, fundamentally changing what scientists do.