(Bloomberg) -- Denmark unveiled an Nvidia-powered supercomputer that will be used by researchers from Novo Nordisk A/S and other Danish pharmaceutical companies as they seek novel drugs and smarter trial designs.
The Gefion machine, which uses 65 kilometers (40 miles) of cable and weighs 30 tons, was symbolically “plugged in” by Nvidia Corp Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang and Denmark’s King Frederik X at an event in Copenhagen on Wednesday.
The supercomputer, which sits in an undisclosed location in the capital, is owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation — the controlling shareholder of Novo — and the Danish state.
The maker of diabetes drug Ozempic and obesity medicine Wegovy is among a handful of private companies whose experts will be allowed to use the Nordic nation’s first supercomputer, which is powered by Nvidia’s artificial intelligence technology, in an initial round of six pilot projects. The unit will be “one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world,” Morten Bodskov, Denmark’s business minister, said.
Gefion is intended for researchers across Denmark’s pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, green transition and quantum computing sectors. A Novo researcher, working alongside an expert from Novonesis and other academics, will use the machine on a Copenhagen University-led project to train a multimodal foundation model for genomic DNA and facilitate new discoveries in disease mutation analysis and vaccine design.
“Computer-aided drug discovery, I think that’s going to revolutionize the industry,” Huang said at the event.
The computer will help to accelerate adoption of AI for drug discovery across the pharmaceutical industry, and also make clinical trial designs smarter through better selection of participants, allowing to conduct cheaper studies, Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, told media at the event.
The jury is still out on whether drugs developed with the help of AI are more likely to be successful for patients than those developed by scientists.
Novo has grown to become Europe’s most valuable company, and its booming profits have significantly benefited its foundation owner, one of the wealthiest charities in the world, which has been able to increase its grant-giving and philanthropic investments.
The foundation has committed about 600 million kroner ($87 million) for initial costs of the computer, while Denmark’s state-run export and investment fund EIFO has contributed about 100 million kroner.
--With assistance from Naomi Kresge.
(Updates with further details on the project in fifth paragraph.)
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