Novo to Harness Anthropic's Claude Science for Accelerated Drug Discovery
Novo, the Danish drugmaker that dropped the Nordisk from its brand two days earlier, is set to utilize Anthropic's AI models and Claude Science to expedite medicine discovery and development. Its CEO, Mike Doustdar, aims to transform Novo into the world's most AI-driven healthcare company.
September 16, 2026 - 4:16 pm
Novo’s headquarters are located in Bagsværd, Denmark. (Credit: Novo Nordisk / Jens Lindhe)
“Joining forces with Anthropic will supercharge our R&D organization and help us on our mission to bring new, transformative health solutions to people living with chronic diseases,” said Doustdar, president and CEO of Novo.
The Danish drugmaker, formerly known as Novo Nordisk, and Anthropic announced their partnership on September 16th, according to Novo’s official statement. The collaboration will focus on tackling drug discovery challenges identified by Novo's scientists and computational teams. They plan to develop tailored tools for specific scientific tasks and workflows supporting biological reasoning.
As a starting point, Novo intends to test Claude Science on particular research and development workflows. Launched in June, Claude Science is an AI workbench designed for scientists, developed by Anthropic.
Novo will also leverage Anthropic’s frontier models for AI-driven software development. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed, as reported by Bloomberg.
Doustdar expressed his belief that AI can significantly boost productivity in R&D and compress the time from research to marketed products: “[This partnership] is another testament to our ambition to become the world’s most AI-driven healthcare company.”
Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, shared a similar sentiment:
"AI’s increasing capability brings with it the potential to compress a century’s worth of biological and medical breakthroughs into a decade. 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 emphasized that the partnership prioritizes robust data governance and human oversight.
Earlier this month, Anthropic addressed concerns regarding the misuse of Claude for surveillance and weapons development. In August, their risk report revealed instances where the model was run without its bioweapon filters activated.
Just two days before this announcement, on September 14th, Novo rebranded from Novo Nordisk to Novo, as reported by CNBC. Doustdar attributed the name change and a subsequent culture shift to the evolving operational environment.
This partnership follows an earlier agreement between Novo and OpenAI to implement AI across the company, according to Bloomberg. Doustdar noted that this new collaboration builds upon their existing AI endeavors with other technology partners.