Inside Novo Nordisk and AWS’s Strategic AI Alliance

Novo Nordisk is expanding its computing and AI capabilities. Credit: Getty Images

Novo Nordisk deepens its AWS AI partnership to modernize R&D, as AWS CEO Matt Garman emphasizes the goal of delivering effective treatments to patients more quickly.

Novo Nordisk has broadened its strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate drug discovery and modernize enterprise operations through cloud infrastructure and agentic AI.

Central to this partnership is a new co-innovation hub established within Novo Nordisk’s existing London facility.

Engineers, AI specialists, R&D teams, and scientists from both organizations will work together to integrate AWS AI technology with Novo Nordisk’s datasets and research insights, aiming to reduce the time from initial drug targets to first human doses.

Mike Doustdar, President and CEO of Novo Nordisk, states: “Partnering with AWS is about making AI a driver of innovation across Novo Nordisk.

“By combining our scientific expertise with AWS’ tools and purpose-built services for the life sciences industry, alongside a dedicated co-innovation hub in our London facility, we are accelerating discovery and developing responsible AI solutions that create real progress for people living with serious chronic diseases.”

Mike Doustdar, CEO of Novo Nordisk. Credit: Novo Nordisk

Leveraging cloud infrastructure and generative AI

This agreement strengthens a multi-year partnership between the two companies, which began with foundational data infrastructure and drug discovery initiatives on AWS and later expanded to include a generative AI platform powered by Amazon Bedrock.

To date, the collaboration has delivered measurable operational improvements, including shorter timelines for clinical documentation and increased productivity across Novo Nordisk’s global workforce of over 25,000 employees.

Under the expanded framework, the organizations will deploy Amazon Bio Discovery and Amazon Bedrock to identify drug targets, expedite therapeutic design, and consolidate clinical, imaging, and genomic datasets to align early research insights with clinical trial development.

Additionally, Novo Nordisk will integrate Amazon Bedrock AgentCore to streamline internal operations through AI agents.

Matt Garman, CEO at AWS. Credit: AWS

Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, says: “Every aspect of our work with Novo Nordisk focuses on one goal: getting the right medicine to patients faster.

“Novo Nordisk has selected AWS as its strategic AI partner to fundamentally transform how medicines are discovered and developed, utilizing services such as Amazon Bio Discovery and Amazon Bedrock.

“We are excited to partner with Novo Nordisk so that these technologies, AWS Forward Deployed Engineers, and Novo Nordisk’s industry-leading science teams can help compress drug discovery timelines, securely process complex datasets, and scale findings across therapeutic areas.”

Expanding enterprise AI across the computing spectrum

The expanded AWS agreement reflects Novo Nordisk’s broader strategy to establish multi-vendor AI alliances across the computing spectrum, covering secure cloud architecture, broad model access, and simulation tools.

In 2025, Novo Nordisk established a computing and simulation partnership with NVIDIA to leverage the Gefion sovereign AI supercomputer for custom AI models, agents, advanced simulation, and physical AI applications.

In April 2026, the company announced an agreement to incorporate OpenAI technologies across drug discovery, supply chain, manufacturing, commercial operations, and workforce training, with pilot programs scaling toward full deployment by late 2026.

Novo Nordisk was also designated as an early collaborator on GPT-Rosalind, OpenAI's biological reasoning model.

This multi-faceted AI expansion occurs amidst intensifying technological investment across the broader sector.

Competitors are pursuing similar multi-vendor strategies: Eli Lilly signed 16 AI partnerships in 2025, followed in 2026 by a US$1bn NVIDIA deal for a dedicated co-innovation lab and a US$2.75bn agreement with Insilico Medicine, while major peers such as Sanofi continue to build out their own multi-provider AI ecosystems.