Nvidia bets on agentic AI to turbocharge biotech discovery
Artificial intelligence played a prominent role at this week’s Bio International Convention in San Diego, the largest biotech event with vendors spanning the full ecosystem of companies in this industry.
Today in a special address, Kimberly Powell (pictured), vice president and general manager of healthcare and life sciences at Nvidia Corp., made the case that agentic AI is about to do for biotech what it just did for software — and the company’s BioNeMo is the stack that turns generic large language models into working “AI scientists” that are both faster and cheaper to run.
Nvidia wants to make ‘AI scientists’ mainstream in biotech
Powell opened her presentation by outlining where the industry is now. “We are witnessing the fastest platform shift the life sciences industry has ever seen,” she said. She compared AI to the microscope, X-ray crystallography, and gene sequencing, calling them a new class of scientific instruments. This time, the instrument doesn’t just see or measure; it reasons, plans and acts.
