Eli Lilly and Nvidia announced a joint five-year investment — up to $1 billion — to establish a San Francisco lab focused on AI-driven drug discovery. Lilly will provide biological and clinical expertise while Nvidia supplies compute, model-building and engineering resources; the partners said the funds will cover infrastructure, compute and talent. The companies said work will begin early this year, building on existing collaborations and Lilly’s AI ‘‘factory’’ initiative. The deal signals pharma’s growing willingness to embed hyperscale AI infrastructure into R&D workflows and to co-locate engineering and drug teams. Lilly CEO David Ricks and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang were quoted in company statements describing the partnership as a step toward shortening discovery timelines. The lab is expected to focus on large-scale data generation, model training and translational efforts that move AI outputs toward therapeutic candidates.