Overview: AI moves from employee tools to scientific workflows
Novo Nordisk is expanding its use of AWS artificial intelligence tools across drug discovery, including AI agents for target identification, therapy design, and research workflows. Under an agreement announced recently, AWS becomes Novo Nordisk’s preferred cloud provider and strategic AI partner, moving the relationship well beyond the employee-facing generative AI applications the pharmaceutical company has already deployed.
At the core of the expanded partnership is a newly created co-innovation hub at Novo Nordisk’s existing London facility, where AWS engineers and Novo Nordisk scientists work directly with the company’s data and research insights. The hub is designed to reduce handoffs between computational analysis and laboratory research as potential drug candidates move through early development.
The agreement builds on a proven track record: according to an AWS case study, more than 25,000 Novo Nordisk employees have already used a generative AI platform built on Amazon Bedrock, creating chatbots that cover more than 2,500 use cases. One large deployment processes more than 26,000 prompts each month against a collection of roughly 140,000 documents.
The London hub: reducing handoffs in early drug development
The London co-innovation hub brings Novo Nordisk R&D staff together with AWS engineers, AI specialists, applied scientists, and professional services teams. AWS said the arrangement is intended to reduce handoffs between computational analysis and laboratory research as potential drug candidates move through early development.
“AI has the potential to transform how we discover, develop and deliver medicines, but real impact comes from combining advanced technology with deep scientific expertise and a clear focus on patients.”
— Thilde Hummel Bøgebjerg, executive vice president of Enterprise IT & Quality at Novo Nordisk
The companies said the hub is intended to shorten the path from identifying a drug target to the first human dose. The partnership combines Novo Nordisk’s research in chronic diseases with AWS cloud infrastructure, AI services, and life sciences technologies.
From clinical documentation to drug discovery: a proven foundation
Novo Nordisk has already demonstrated the potential of generative AI in regulated, high-stakes environments. One of the most dramatic results came in clinical-study documentation. Using Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 through Amazon Bedrock, the company reduced the time required to generate some clinical documentation by more than 90%.
- Work that previously involved 40 to 50 people and could take as long as 15 weeks was reduced to minutes for a team of three.
- Medical professionals continue to review and validate the material generated by AI.
According to AWS, those earlier deployments tackled information retrieval and document drafting across non-regulated processes. But the new agreement moves generative AI further into the scientific core of drug development, from target identification to therapy design and biological analysis.
Amazon Bio Discovery: a multi-model agentic platform
One of the key technologies involved is Amazon Bio Discovery, designed to support computational biology and drug development using AI models and agents. AWS said Bio Discovery provides researchers with access to more than 40 biological AI models, and AI agents can be used to select and coordinate models for different research tasks.
Organisations can also combine AWS-hosted models with their own proprietary models in multi-step workflows. Novo Nordisk plans to use the service for tasks including:
- Identifying potential drug targets
- Designing therapies
- Analysing biological information
- Generating and ranking potential drug candidates
Selected candidates are then sent for laboratory synthesis and testing. Experimental results can be returned to the computational workflow for further analysis and model refinement, creating a closed loop that links computational drug design with physical testing in the same research workflow.
Connecting research data across clinical, genomic and imaging domains
Novo Nordisk will also use Amazon Bedrock to build AI applications that work across clinical, genomic, and imaging datasets. According to the companies, connecting these data sources is intended to allow findings from early-stage research to inform clinical trial design.
This data integration is significant because it bridges the gap between hypothesis generation and clinical validation. Rather than treating drug discovery and clinical development as separate phases, the combined AI platform is designed to let insights from one stage influence the next.
Agentic infrastructure: Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
Another part of the agreement involves Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, AWS infrastructure for deploying and operating AI agents. AWS said AgentCore allows agents to work across enterprise data, connect with existing systems, and carry out multi-step workflows.
Novo Nordisk has not detailed which AgentCore functions it plans to use in individual research workflows, but the company said it intends to deploy the technology across research and operational processes. This suggests a broad rollout rather than a narrow pilot.
“Novo Nordisk’s partnership with AWS shows what’s possible when you pair AI with deep life-sciences expertise — removing bottlenecks across drug discovery, not just studying them.”
— Dan Sheeran, vice president and general manager of Healthcare and Life Sciences at AWS
AWS Forward Deployed Engineers will also work directly with Novo Nordisk teams on the systems developed through the partnership. The programme embeds AWS technical staff with customers to work on AI projects, including agent-based applications.
A broader strategic bet on AI
The AWS agreement is part of a wider AI strategy at Novo Nordisk. The company has also worked with OpenAI on deploying artificial intelligence across areas including drug discovery, manufacturing, and commercial operations. It has also signed on to use Denmark’s Gefion supercomputer for AI model development and other data-intensive scientific research.
For AWS, the life sciences partnership adds to a growing portfolio. AWS has separately announced life sciences AI collaborations with Flagship Pioneering and Johnson & Johnson in 2026. The broader relationship between Novo Nordisk and Amazon also includes Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Ads, and One Medical.
AWS CEO Matt Garman said the companies intend to use the technology to shorten drug discovery timelines, process complex research datasets, and apply findings across therapeutic areas. Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar said the partnership is intended to accelerate drug discovery and expand the use of AI across the company’s work on chronic diseases.
What it means for the industry
The Novo Nordisk–AWS partnership illustrates a broader shift in life sciences: from AI as a document-automation tool to AI as a core scientific collaborator. The combination of agentic AI, multi-model orchestration, and tight integration with laboratory workflows could reduce the time and cost of getting new medicines to patients.
It also highlights the importance of infrastructure. Co-innovation hubs, forward-deployed engineers, and platforms like Amazon Bio Discovery and AgentCore are designed to embed AI deeply in the scientific process — not as a bolt-on, but as a fundamental part of how research is conducted.
Whether this translates into faster approvals and better therapies will depend on execution, data quality, and the willingness of scientific teams to trust and validate AI-generated hypotheses. But the direction is clear: agentic AI has moved to the centre of drug discovery.