Nvidia's AI ambitions in medicine and health care are becoming clear

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Last week, Nvidia announced deals with Johnson & Johnson for use of generative AI in surgery, and with GE Healthcare to improve medical imaging. The health care developments at its 2024 GTC AI conference, — which also included the launch of roughly two dozen new AI-powered, healthcare-focused tools — demonstrate just how important medicine is to Nvidia's non-tech sector revenue opportunities in the future.

"The reason why Nvidia is so popular today is because it basically provided the plumbing and the technology for something that you could not do simply before or if you had to do something like this you would need probably several times more time, money and cost," said Raj Joshi, a technology analyst and senior vice president at Moody's Ratings. "Health care, whether it's biotechnology, chemicals, or drug discovery is a very powerful area."

Nvidia shares are up close to 100% year-to-date, and the biotech industry is an example of the untapped potential that investors are continue to bet on. AI can speed up the process of drug discovery and even find uses for drugs that may have failed to produce results for the initial disease they were developed to target.

"Over the last 18 months or so, we tend to believe it is more hope than hype because of the tangible outcomes and then the very compelling use cases how AI helped with the pharmaceutical industry, medtech industry or biotech industry," said Arda Ural, EY Americas health and life sciences industry market leader.

Drug development is a risky process that can take at least a decade from concept to clinical studies, Ural said. It's also a process that can cost billions, with a high chance of failure.