Novo Nordisk and Amazon sign AI drug discovery pact, launch London innovation hub

Biotech Novo Nordisk and Amazon sign AI drug discovery pact, launch London innovation hub By Will Maddox Aug 10, 2026 8:00am Novo Nordisk Amazon Web Services Artificial Intelligence drug discovery Novo Nordisk and Amazon Web Services (AWS) will partner to leverage AI and accelerate drug discovery. The deal will result in AWS becoming Novo’s preferred cloud provider and AI partner while creating a hub inside the Big Pharma's existing London facility where the two companies will collaborate on how to accelerate the development of new medicines, according to an August 10 release. Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar said the collaboration was about “making AI a driver of innovation” across the company.

“We are accelerating discovery and developing responsible AI solutions that will create real progress for people living with serious chronic diseases,” Doustdar added. The agreement is designed to unite Novo’s therapeutic knowledge across chronic disease with AWS’ cloud and AI services, secure infrastructure and life sciences technologies, according to the release. Novo said the partnership had already resulted in a reduction in clinical documentation time and made 25,000 employees more productive.

As part of the collaboration, Novo will have access to services such as Amazon Bio Discovery, which offers scientists AI models trained on biological datasets, as well as Amazon Bedrock, which is used to build AI apps. The tools are meant to identify drug targets, design new therapies and bring together clinical, genomic and imaging data to create biotech breakthroughs, according to the release. The Danish Big Pharma will also deploy Amazon Bedrock AgentCore—a managed infrastructure platform to help developers deploy and scale AI agents—in an effort to make its operations more efficient.

“Every part of our work with Novo Nordisk comes back to one thing: getting the right medicine to patients, faster,” AWS CEO Matt Garman said in the release. “We’re 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.” The pact is an extension of Novo’s ongoing collaboration with Amazon, which also includes Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Ads and Amazon One Medical throughout its business functions. AWS put this morning's announcement in the context of AWS’ recently launched Forward Deployed Engineering organization, where experts are embedded with AWS customers to co-develop and design agentic AI throughout the client’s business.

Among the numerous AI drug discovery collaborations that have been signed in 2026, AWS has also announced AI partnerships with biotech company creator Flagship Pioneering to accelerate drug discovery and with Johnson & Johnson to bring AI into the operating room. Novo's own AI explorations have seen the Copenhagen-headquartered pharma work with ChatGPT parent company OpenAI to integrate AI “globally from discovery to commercial operations.” The company has also signed up as a customer of Denmark’s first so-called “supercomputer.” Novo Nordisk Amazon Web Services Artificial Intelligence drug discovery AI and Machine Learning Deals Biotech