Denmark has unveiled an artificial intelligence supercomputer, powered by Nvidia technology, that will be used by Novo Nordisk and other pharmaceutical companies in the country in the search for new medicines and smarter clinical trials.
The Gefion supercomputer, which weighs 30 tons and uses 65 kilometers of cables, was symbolically “connected” by the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, and the king of Denmark, Frederik X, at an event in Copenhagen this Wednesday, 23.
The machine is owned by the Danish state and the Novo Nordisk Foundation – Novo’s controlling shareholder – and will be located in a secret location in the capital.
Novo Nordisk, which makes the diabetes medicine Ozempic and obesity medicine Wegovy, is among the few private companies allowed to use the supercomputer during this initial round of six pilot projects. The unit will be “one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world,” said Morten Bodskov, Denmark’s business minister.
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Gefion is aimed at researchers in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology, green transition, as well as quantum computing sectors in Denmark. Novo, working together with Novonesis and researchers at leading Danish universities, will use the technology to train a multimodal genomic DNA model and facilitate advances in disease mutation analysis and vaccine design.
“I think computer-aided drug discovery will revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry,” Huang said at the event.
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Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, said that the computer will help accelerate drug discovery with the help of artificial intelligence across the pharmaceutical sector and will also make clinical trial designs smarter through better participant selection. , allowing cheaper studies.
Now, the main question is whether medicines developed with the help of AI are more likely to be successful for patients compared to medicines developed by scientists.
Ozempic drives Novo’s growth
Novo has grown to become the most valuable company in Europe. His expanding profits have significantly benefited his proprietary foundation, one of the richest charities in the world, which has managed to increase its donations and philanthropic investments.
The foundation allocated around 600 million Danish crowns (about R$493.9 million) towards the computer’s initial costs, while Denmark’s state export and investment fund, EIFO, contributed around 100 million Danish crowns. .
