Novo Nordisk has made Amazon Web Services its preferred cloud provider and strategic AI partner, a deal announced on 10 August that puts agentic AI at the centre of its drug-discovery pipeline. The two companies will run a co-innovation hub inside Novo Nordisk's London facility, where AWS engineers and AI specialists work alongside the pharma company's R&D teams with one goal: shortening the journey from a promising drug target to a first human dose.

The partnership is built on AWS's life-sciences stack — Amazon Bio Discovery, Amazon Bedrock and the new Amazon Bedrock AgentCore — to link genomic, imaging and clinical data, design candidate therapies faster and deploy AI agents that automate parts of research and operations. Novo Nordisk reports early wins from the collaboration already: clinical documentation time is down, and more than 25,000 employees are using AI tools that lift productivity across the business.

'Partnering with AWS is about making AI a driver of innovation across Novo Nordisk,' said president and CEO Mike Doustdar, pointing to a 'dedicated co-innovation hub within our existing facility in London.' AWS chief executive Matt Garman framed the shared mission simply: 'Every part of our work with Novo Nordisk comes back to one thing — getting the right medicine to patients, faster.'

The deal extends an existing relationship that also touches Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Ads and Amazon One Medical. For the life-sciences industry, it is another sign that big cloud providers are moving from renting compute to co-developing the scientific process itself.

Sources