Novo Nordisk partners with Anthropic to accelerate drug development

Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical powerhouse best known for its GLP-1 drugs, is teaming up with Anthropic to weave AI directly into its drug discovery and development operations. The collaboration, announced on September 16, will deploy Anthropic’s Claude models and its newer Claude Science tool across Novo Nordisk’s R&D workflows. The goal is straightforward even if the execution won’t be: make the painfully slow process of developing new drugs meaningfully faster. Drug development timelines are famously brutal, often stretching a decade or more from initial research to an approved product on pharmacy shelves. Novo Nordisk wants AI to put a dent in that timeline. What the partnership actually involves The collaboration has two main prongs. First, Novo Nordisk will test Claude Science on targeted R&D workflows, particularly those involving complex biological reasoning. Second, the company plans to use Anthropic’s frontier AI models to strengthen its internal software development capabilities. Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar framed the deal as central to the company’s broader ambitions. “This partnership helps compress the path from research to marketed product,” Doustd...