Huang Renxun has repeatedly referred to "AI+healthcare systems/biology" as the "next amazing revolution" in various public occasions, and his concept has also received genuine support from the pharmaceutical industry.
On March 18th local time, the Novo Nordisk Foundation (the enterprise foundation behind Novo Nordisk) announced that it will collaborate with Nvidia to build an AI supercomputer called Gefion in Denmark. The computer will run Nvidia's AI technology, with the main goal of discovering new drugs and treatment methods that can be used by researchers in the public and private sectors of Denmark.
The foundation promises to provide approximately 600 million Danish kroner (approximately 629 million RMB) in funding for the supercomputer center, while the Danish Export and Investment Fund will contribute 100 million Danish kroner (approximately 100 million RMB). Eviden, a subsidiary of Atos Group, a French IT service management company, is responsible for delivering, installing, and configuring this computer, and providing maintenance and technical support throughout its entire lifecycle. It is expected that the computer will be ready for pilot projects by the end of 2024 and will be placed at the Danish National AI Innovation Center.
According to Eviden's statement, Gefion is a large Nvidia DGX Super POD consisting of 191 Nvidia DGX H100 systems (standalone computer systems), with a total of 1528 Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPUs and 382 Intel Xeon Platinum CPUs connected through the Nvidia Quantum-2 InfiniBand network platform. It will include storage from DDN. The system will also use the most advanced Nvidia software platforms, such as Nvidia CUDA Quantum, an open-source hybrid quantum computing platform with powerful simulation tools and a functional system for programming hybrid CPUs, GPUs, and quantum processing units (QPUs).
AI+Pan Healthcare - "The Next Amazing Revolution"
At the ongoing Nvidia 2024 GTC conference, healthcare has once again become a highlight. According to the industry classification on Nvidia's official website, there are 90 events related to healthcare/life sciences at the conference, ranking first among all industries and surpassing a range of popular fields such as automotive, cloud services, hardware/semiconductors.
In the past two years, Nvidia's venture capital division has invested a significant portion of its funds in drug research and development. In 2023 alone, Nvidia invested in nine startup biotech companies focused on drug research and development, including small molecule drugs (Terray), large molecule antibodies (CHARM, Evozyne), GPCR drugs (Superluminal), nucleic acid drugs and vaccines (Inceptive), and so on.
Nvidia's investment map for 2023 (source: S&P Global Market Intelligence)
"Since the AI applications created by Nvidia GPU assisted major technology companies can stimulate the birth of the first chip company with a market value of $2 trillion, why can't Nvidia's high-performance GPU assisted drug discovery industry create a drug innovation company worth $1 trillion?" Kimberly Powell, Vice President of Nvidia Healthcare, said of Nvidia's investment in the field of life sciences.
Powell delivered a speech at TD Cowen's 44th Annual Healthcare Conference, emphasizing the opportunity to leverage AI in the healthcare sector, revealing that Nvidia's revenue from healthcare has exceeded $1 billion (both direct and indirect), and market opportunities may reach hundreds of billions of dollars over time.
At the same time as the GTC meeting, Nvidia also announced a partnership with healthcare company Hippocratic AI to provide generative AI nurses with an hourly wage of only $9. Hippocratic promotes how to use inexpensive artificial intelligence agents to provide real-time medical advice to patients through video calls, thereby reducing the cost of manual nurses, who cost $90 per hour.
It is worth noting that at this year's NVIDIA GTC, the fireside conversation of artificial intelligence expert Li Feifei was a focus of attention from the outside world. This conversation was hosted by Bill Dally, Chief Scientist of NVIDIA, and Li Feifei shared her views on the future development of AI. An interesting conclusion is that the application of AI in the medical field may be the most profound.
Her reason is quite humanistic, that is, women and people of color working in this field can use AI to get rid of the difficult and neglected care work; Older people can achieve a more dignified old age through technology.
Nvidia, Novo Nordisk, and Li Feifei can be said to have gathered highly authoritative representative companies and figures in the AI/academic and medical industries.
Expanding our horizons, in the field of "AI+healthcare", key market participants not only include Nvidia and Novo Nordisk, but also numerous technology giants such as IBM, Google, and Microsoft mentioned above. Through continuous technological innovation and software and hardware ecosystem cooperation, they have promoted the application and development of AI in the medical field. It is foreseeable that with the emergence of more innovative solutions and applications, the prospects of AI in the medical field will become clearer.
