Novo Nordisk and Anthropic Team Up to Accelerate Drug Discovery

The Novo Nordisk Anthropic collaboration, announced on 16 September 2026 in Bagsværd, Denmark, pairs the Danish pharma group with Anthropic, the AI lab behind Claude, to speed the discovery and development of new medicines. Novo will use Anthropic’s models and Claude Science to support scientific reasoning across its research and development organisation, and for agentic software engineering.

The two companies will take on drug discovery problems identified by Novo’s own scientists and computational teams, and build targeted solutions for specific scientific workflows. The goal is to support biological reasoning and shorten the distance from early research to a marketed product.

“This partnership is another testament to our ambition to become the world’s most AI-driven healthcare company, building on Novo’s current AI initiatives with other technology partners,” said Mike Doustdar, president and CEO of Novo Nordisk. “Joining forces with Anthropic will supercharge our R&D organisation and help us on our mission to bring new, transformative health solutions to people living with chronic diseases.”

Doustdar added that AI can raise productivity in research and development and compress the path from research to a marketed product. Beyond that, he said, AI tools can open up entirely new scientific opportunities by helping researchers reason about human biology and drug mechanics.

“AI’s increasing capability brings with it the potential to compress a century’s worth of biological and medical breakthroughs into a decade,” said Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic. “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. That is exactly what our collaboration with Novo is built to achieve.”

Novo Nordisk Anthropic collaboration: Claude Science and software engineering

As a first step, Novo will test Claude Science in selected R&D workflows, focusing on problems where the two companies’ combined capabilities are expected to have the greatest impact. Novo will also use Anthropic’s frontier models to strengthen its AI-driven software development, part of the company’s effort to scale AI across the business.

The collaboration has been designed with robust data governance and human oversight, so that AI is applied responsibly and in line with Novo’s ethical and compliance standards.

Why faster drug discovery matters for market access

Novo Nordisk employs more than 67,000 people worldwide, and the partnership with Anthropic builds on its existing AI initiatives with other technology partners. For market access teams and payers, the appeal is direct: a shorter research-to-launch timeline means new medicines can be assessed, priced, and reimbursed sooner. AI that sharpens biological reasoning could also strengthen the evidence that health technology assessment bodies rely on when they decide whether to fund a treatment.

Source: Novo Nordisk press release, 16 September 2026.