- AWS will become Novo Nordisk's preferred cloud provider and strategic AI partner.
- A new co-innovation hub at Novo Nordisk's King’s Cross facility will bring scientists and AWS engineers together.
- More than 25,000 Novo Nordisk employees already use its AI tools.
Novo Nordisk is taking its use of AI in drug discovery a step further, joining forces with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to bring artificial intelligence deeper into the pharmaceutical giant's research, development and day-to-day operations.
Under the strategic partnership announced on August 10, AWS will become Novo Nordisk's preferred cloud provider and strategic AI partner. The companies are also setting up a co-innovation hub at Novo Nordisk's King’s Cross facility in London, where researchers, AI specialists, engineers and applied scientists will work together.
The idea is fairly straightforward. Instead of scientists identifying a potential drug target, handing the problem to a technology team and waiting for the results to come back, the two sides will work on the process together.
That could allow AI-generated findings to be tested and refined more quickly, with the companies aiming to shorten the journey from identifying a drug target to the first human dose.
AI moves closer to the laboratory
Novo Nordisk plans to use AWS technologies including Amazon Bio Discovery, which gives scientists access to biological AI models for identifying and evaluating potential drug candidates.
The company will also use Amazon Bedrock and Bedrock AgentCore to build and deploy AI applications and agents across research and development, commercial operations and enterprise IT.
In practical terms, the technology could be used to identify drug targets, design potential therapies and connect large sets of genomic, imaging and clinical data. The companies say the aim is to make the process of moving between computer-based research and laboratory experiments faster.
Novo Nordisk has already been using AWS for generative AI. More than 25,000 employees now use an internal solution built with Amazon Bedrock to create chatbots, retrieve information, draft documents and carry out tasks in non-regulated areas.
The new agreement takes that use of AI beyond employee productivity and towards the company's core scientific work.
Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar said the partnership was about making AI "a driver of innovation" across the company, adding that the company was using it to accelerate discovery and develop AI solutions for people living with serious chronic diseases.
AWS CEO Matt Garman said the partnership would combine the company's technology with Novo Nordisk's scientific expertise to help "compress drug discovery timelines" and process complex datasets securely.
Why London matters
The choice of London for the co-innovation hub gives the partnership a physical base where the two companies can work side by side rather than treating AI as a separate technology project.
Novo Nordisk employs more than 66,700 people across 80 countries, meaning the systems developed through the hub could potentially be scaled across a large international workforce.
The partnership also extends a wider relationship between Novo Nordisk and Amazon. The pharmaceutical company already works with Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Ads and Amazon One Medical in areas including the marketing and delivery of medicines.
AI is becoming an increasingly important part of Novo Nordisk's research strategy. The company has previously said it has used AI and high-throughput experimentation to assess one billion virtual molecules and screen about 2,500 compounds in the laboratory.
It has also expanded its AI work through partnerships with companies including OpenAI and H1.
The AWS deal therefore adds another major technology provider to Novo Nordisk's growing AI ecosystem.
For AWS, the partnership gives it a major pharmaceutical customer for its push into AI-driven life sciences. The company has been building tools specifically for drug discovery and is increasingly working with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to put those systems into production.
The bigger question now is how much of the drug-development process AI can realistically change.
Finding a promising molecule is only one part of bringing a medicine to patients. It still has to pass laboratory testing, clinical trials, regulatory scrutiny and manufacturing checks.
Novo Nordisk and AWS are betting that AI can make some of those early stages faster and more connected.
The London hub will be one place where they attempt to find out how far that can go.
