Novo Nordisk deepens its AI push with Anthropic partnership

Novo Nordisk is partnering with Anthropic to use artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery and development of new medicines, Inc. reports.

The Danish pharmaceutical company, known for Wegovy and Ozempic, will explore how Anthropic’s Claude Science tools can help researchers analyze complex data, investigate human biology and better understand how drugs work. Novo also plans to expand its use of Anthropic’s AI models beyond research and into software development. 

The company already uses Claude to automate clinical trial reports and has reduced the time needed to produce some patient documentation from months to minutes. The financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed. 

The deal is Novo’s third major AI initiative of 2026, following an April partnership with OpenAI focused on analyzing data and identifying potential drug candidates and an August partnership with Amazon Web Services to establish a London co-innovation hub focused on accelerating drug discovery. 

Novo said the Anthropic agreement includes data-governance safeguards and human oversight to ensure its AI use remains consistent with ethical and compliance requirements. The partnership comes as pharmaceutical companies increasingly turn to AI for drug research, with Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Merck and Takeda also pursuing significant AI-related agreements. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says that increasingly capable AI could shorten research timelines, improve outcomes and accelerate the discovery of medicines and treatments.

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