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SAN FRANCISCO — The small hotel meeting room was packed like a rush hour subway. Bankers in dark suits were crammed tightly into a small room on the third floor of the Westin St. Francis, lining the aisles and doorways, and spilling out into the hallways where it was impossible to hear.

The occasion: Nvidia, the chipmaker whose market capitalization has soared beyond $1 trillion because of its role in the revolutionary work occurring in artificial intelligence, was presenting at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, and describing why it thinks AI, running on Nvidia computers, could dramatically increase the number of new medicines that are created while reducing their cost, ushering in an age of “digital biology.”

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When Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, finished her presentation, the room erupted in applause.

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