Huawei won't make drugs, plans to be the tech backbone for AI drug discovery

At a major pharma innovation conference, Fan Jie, head of Huawei's pharmaceutical team, made it clear that Huawei will not make drugs itself. Instead, it will offer computing power, storage, networks and data tools to drug companies and research groups, serving as the tech backbone of AI drug discovery. AI drug development is still growing fast. Tools like protein structure prediction are already in use, but the full drug research process is not connected yet. The next step is getting models into real research and linking them with lab data and decisions. Huawei sees three strengths here: advanced computing power, the world's largest 1,024-card computing cluster, and an ecosystem built with AI pharma partners. It has built large clusters with two medical companies, with investment near 100 million yuan, and also supports research institutes like the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica.