Nvidia Sets Up Israeli AI Research Group for Medicine and Science

Nvidia has established a research group in Israel to pursue AI for medical and scientific discovery, placing it inside the company’s global CTO office rather than tying it to an immediate product. The group already has researchers and outside projects, but its planned hiring would make it substantially larger than it is today.

A science team inside the CTO office

Called Applied AI Architecture, the group is based at Nvidia’s Israeli development center. It reports through the global office led by CTO Michael Kagan. That position distinguishes it from a stand-alone hospital or pharmaceutical project: the team can pursue research across several scientific fields under a company-wide technology office.

Dr. Nati Daniel leads the group. He holds a PhD in artificial intelligence from the Technion and previously held senior roles at Intel, GE and Huawei. The assignment is long-term: researchers are meant to develop scientific ideas that could eventually become technologies in Nvidia systems, rather than focus on immediate commercial applications.

Hiring for a broader research program

The team currently has several researchers in Israel. Nvidia plans to recruit dozens more over the next year, and its website lists related research positions in Tel Aviv. Those are hiring intentions and openings, not a headcount the group has already reached. For now, its work combines a small internal team with collaborations beyond Nvidia.

Three fields, three kinds of partner

In genomics, the group is collaborating with Sheba Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York on a Genomic Foundation Model. The project is intended to help researchers examine poorly understood portions of the human genome. Its longer-range goals include finding approaches to disease prevention, better diagnosis and more personalized medicine. Those are research aims, not clinical results.

The Israeli team is also taking part in Nvidia’s broader collaboration with Eli Lilly. The companies plan to invest approximately $1 billion over five years in AI for drug discovery and development. Their proposed approach joins genomic and sequencing data with information about chemistry, biology and cellular context. The investment plan belongs to the wider collaboration; it is not a disclosed budget for Daniel’s team.

Materials research supplies a third track. The group participates in GENMAT, an international initiative that received an approximately €6 million grant from the European Union’s Horizon program. Its participants are developing AI tools to discover and develop materials for industries including aviation, automotive manufacturing and pharmaceuticals. As with the Lilly investment plan, the grant describes the larger project, not funding assigned to Nvidia’s new group.

The next step is still research

Nvidia is developing further partnerships in Israel, with additional collaborations expected to be announced. The distinct test for this group will be whether its enlarged team can turn work across hospitals, drug research and materials into usable technology. No timetable has been given for incorporating that work into Nvidia systems. Until then, the clearest evidence of progress will come from the group’s hiring and the work its partnerships produce.