Novo Nordisk partners with Anthropic to accelerate drug discovery

Novo Nordisk has partnered with Anthropic to use Claude AI models in drug discovery and development, with the collaboration announced on 16 September 2026 to accelerate research and expand AI-driven software development.

The Danish pharmaceutical company will initially test Anthropic models and Claude Science across selected research and development workflows. The companies will identify scientific problems where their combined capabilities could support biological reasoning and contribute to faster medicine discovery.

Mike Doustdar, president and CEO of Novo Nordisk, said the partnership would support the company’s ambition to become a more AI-driven healthcare company. “AI can help us increase productivity in R&D and compress the path from research to marketed product,” he said.

The collaboration will focus on challenges identified by Novo Nordisk’s scientists and computational teams, with targeted solutions developed for specific scientific workflows. The company said Claude Science will initially be assessed against areas where AI could provide the greatest impact rather than being deployed across its entire R&D operation.

Novo Nordisk will use Anthropic’s frontier models for AI-driven software development, which the companies said would help the pharmaceutical group scale its use of AI. Reuters reported that Novo Nordisk already uses Claude to automate trial report generation, reducing the time required to create patient documentation from months to minutes.

Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, said the technology could accelerate medical research by giving scientists access to advanced AI models. “By giving leading researchers access to safe, capable, and trusted frontier models, we can shorten research timelines, improve outcomes, and discover medicines and treatments that significantly improve human life,” he said.

The partnership will operate with data governance and human oversight, according to the companies, with safeguards intended to ensure AI applications comply with Novo Nordisk’s ethical and compliance standards.

The deal follows other AI initiatives at Novo Nordisk, including partnerships with OpenAI and Amazon Web Services, as pharmaceutical companies increasingly explore AI to improve research productivity and drug development. The company said its collaboration with Anthropic is intended to complement its existing AI work rather than replace it.