Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a core growth pillar of the pharmaceutical and biotech healthcare industry.
On the 12th (local time), AI was a hot topic at the world's largest pharmaceutical and biotech investment event, the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference (JPMHC 2026), held in San Francisco.
From the opening remarks by the investment bank (IB) JP Morgan that hosted the event to presentations by global big pharma, AI emerged as a key keyword across the stage. In particular, NVIDIA, the AI Semiconductor company that rose to No. 1 in global market capitalization, and Tempus AI, a Nasdaq-listed U.S. company, drew major attention and took the stage.
An investment event once centered on traditional large pharmaceutical companies is changing with the emergence of technologies and corporations that break down industry boundaries. AI is becoming the heartbeat that speeds up new drug development and a strategic tool to boost profitability by streamlining manufacturing and production processes.
Albert Bourla, CEO of the U.S. pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer, said, "AI contributed greatly to saving $5.6 billion (about 8.25 trillion won)," and "We are ready to use AI not only in manufacturing but across the organization."
Chris Boerner, chief executive officer (CEO) of Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), said, "We expanded the use of AI last year," and "This year, we will use AI to speed up research and development (R&D)."
◇ "AI, the core engine for new drug R&D"
That day, NVIDIA and Eli Lilly and Company announced they will establish a Co-Innovation AI Lab in the San Francisco area.
The two companies said they plan to invest $1 billion (about 1.46 trillion won) over five years to realize a new scientific paradigm, including laboratory automation, manufacturing process optimization, and accelerating clinical development.
They said NVIDIA's next-generation graphics processing unit (GPU) system, Vera Rubin, will be used as the AI foundation. This is the next-generation AI superchip platform that NVIDIA unveiled at CES 2026 as the successor to Blackwell.
Kimberly Powell, vice president of NVIDIA's healthcare and life sciences institutional sector, said, "Eli Lilly and Company is pushing a transition to computer-based research, and combined with NVIDIA's AI technology, it will accelerate breakthrough discoveries."
David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly and Company, said, "If we combine our vast data and scientific knowledge with NVIDIA's computing power and model-building expertise, groundbreaking new drug development will be possible."
NVIDIA plans to build a "digital dry lab," where AI learns from experimental data to advance models and is used for automated research design.
AI will select drug candidates through virtual experiments on computers and then learn from actual experimental results to design the next experiments. In this process, automated experimental equipment and robotic systems will be introduced to speed up research, and a research automation structure will be implemented that recycles experimental results to further improve the models.
Powell said, "Platform expansion means acting as the glue that connects experimental data, research results, AI models, and automation systems into one," and "AI is not a mere assistant but has taken its place as a core tool leading research."
◇ Profitable corporation Tempus AI: "Data on 45 million patients secured"
Tempus AI, which is showing rapid growth in the U.S. medical AI market, also drew participants' attention. The company was founded in 2015 and listed on Nasdaq in 2024.
It first launched its business with AI-based genomic analysis and clinical data integration services. It then rolled out AI diagnostic and prediction solutions and a patient-only mobile app in succession. While many medical AI corporations worldwide, including in Korea, are still in the red, the company turned a profit last year.
In his presentation, Eric Lefkofsky, founder and CEO of Tempus AI, said, "We are now profitable on an EBITDA basis and have entered a stage where we can fully sustain ourselves." He set a target of "25% average annual growth over the next three years."
Lefkofsky explained that the company has built a monetization structure through a diagnostics business that conducts clinical tests focused on oncology and generates revenue through insurance claims, and a data business that provides the data generated in that process for research.
He said, "Tempus AI now has built one of the industry's largest multimodal datasets with data on more than 45 million patients." This means it holds data that combines genes, imaging, and clinical information.
According to him, even in the United States 10 years ago, it took years for researchers to gather data on dozens of people, and large-scale patient data was not being used for research. To solve this, Tempus AI has been de-identifying data generated in clinical diagnostics and accumulating it so it can be used for research.
Lefkofsky said, "Last year, data sales were $316 million (about 460 billion won), up about 30% from the previous year, and 19 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies and more than 250 biotechs are using Tempus AI's data." He said total contract value (TCV) has exceeded $1.1 billion (1.62 trillion won).
He said, "Together with global pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca, we are building an oncology multimodal foundation model," and "By leveraging large-scale computing infrastructure, we are improving productivity across diagnostics and new drug development."
Jeremy Meilman, global co-head of the JP Morgan healthcare investment banking institutional sector, said in his opening remarks, "There is a transformative power of AI across the industry," and predicted, "Health care tech has become the most active field in the market, and it will be a key driver accelerating industry restructuring, leading this year's mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and initial public offering (IPO) markets."