Novo Nordisk is partnering with Anthropic to cut the time needed to develop new drugs. It plans to apply the Claude model to its R&D process to speed up drug discovery and commercialisation.

Cryptopolitan, a blockchain outlet, reported on Tuesday that the collaboration centres on developing customised AI tools tailored to pharmaceutical research sites. Novo Nordisk scientists and its computational research team will present real problems from the drug discovery process, and the two companies will jointly develop tools to address those tasks. The focus is on biological reasoning. Novo Nordisk plans to build a system to find and develop new medicines faster.

Novo Nordisk will also use Anthropic's latest AI models in software development. The company viewed AI-assisted coding as an important step in expanding the use of AI companywide. It will first pilot "Claude Science" in some R&D workflows and then verify the scope of adoption starting with areas where it judges the impact will be greatest.

The companies will also put controls in place as the scope of use expands. They included data governance rules and a human oversight system in the terms of the collaboration. Novo Nordisk said it designed the use of AI to take place within its compliance and ethical standards. The deal also carries the aim of validating advanced AI in tightly regulated drug development processes.

Claude Science is not a separate new model but Anthropic's research work environment. It runs on existing Claude model families and also includes Opus 4.8. It also connects to more than 60 scientific databases and supports prebuilt tools for genomics, proteomics, structural biology and cheminformatics. Its structure allows a main work agent to create sub-agents by task, while a separate review agent checks citations and calculations.

The report also cited early user cases. The Allen Institute and the UCSF Brain Tumor Center assessed that the tool greatly reduced the time needed for complex analysis. Novo Nordisk appears to be seeking to confirm whether such productivity gains can be applied to its own R&D.

The companies' chief executives also set out the goals of the collaboration. Mike Doustar (마이크 두스타르), Novo Nordisk's president and chief executive officer, said the partnership with Anthropic would strengthen the R&D organisation and help deliver new health solutions to chronic disease patients faster. He said AI could raise R&D productivity and cut the time from research to marketed products.

Dario Amodei (다리오 아모데이), Anthropic's co-founder and CEO, also said improved AI performance could greatly accelerate advances in medicine and biology. He said, "Increases in AI capabilities have the potential to compress a century of biology and medical innovation into 10 years."

This is not Novo Nordisk's first move to adopt AI. Earlier this year it signed a contract with OpenAI to review the use of AI in drug development, and it also built an AI innovation hub with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Novo Nordisk is continuing a trend of working with multiple AI companies to embed AI across its pharmaceutical R&D system.

Anthropic is also expanding its foothold in the pharmaceutical industry. After providing Bristol Myers Squibb employees with access to Claude for research and drug development, it has now added Novo Nordisk as a large pharmaceutical customer. How Novo Nordisk, which employs more than 67,000 people worldwide, performs in real R&D sites is expected to be a key point to watch.