Novo Nordisk and Amazon Web Services have announced a strategic partnership aimed at accelerating AI drug discovery and modernizing enterprise operations through advanced cloud infrastructure. Under the new agreement, AWS becomes the preferred cloud provider and strategic partner for the global healthcare leader. The collaboration combines deep clinical expertise in serious chronic diseases with specialized life sciences technologies, secure cloud systems, and machine learning models.
Expanding Strategic Collaboration in Life Sciences
This strategic partnership to boost AI drug discovery expands upon an existing foundation between the two organizations. Novo Nordisk already collaborates with Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Ads, and Amazon One Medical to support how treatments are marketed and delivered to patients. The addition of AWS provides the computational infrastructure necessary to drive operational efficiency and power scientific research across a global workforce of more than 66,700 employees operating in 80 countries.
Co-Innovation Hub at London King’s Cross Facility
To bridge the traditional division between research scientists and technical engineers, the companies are establishing a co-innovation hub within the King’s Cross facility in London. Drug research typically involves separate teams handling hypothesis generation, computational testing, and clinical decision-making, which can lead to operational handoff delays and lost context.
Integrated Technical and Scientific Teams
The London hub unites research and development teams directly with engineers, data specialists, and applied scientists from the AWS Forward Deployed Engineering team and AWS Professional Services organization. By placing computational scientists and clinical researchers in the same physical environment, the initiative aims to shorten the timeline from initial drug target identification to the first human dose. Real-time decision-making allows model engineers and research leaders to refine experimental designs immediately when an AI drug discovery workflow identifies promising candidate molecules.
“By expanding our partnership with AWS, we are creating an environment where our scientists, engineers and technology teams can co-innovate, scale responsibly and accelerate the journey from scientific insight to meaningful outcomes for people living with serious chronic diseases,” said Thilde Hummel Bøgebjerg, Executive Vice President, Enterprise IT & Quality, Novo Nordisk.
Enterprise AI Services Built for Life Sciences
As part of the deployment, Novo Nordisk will integrate purpose-built applications, including Amazon Bio Discovery and Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, across its research, commercial operations, and enterprise IT divisions. Amazon Bio Discovery enables researchers to directly access biological AI models for evaluating and generating candidate molecules. The service bridges computational design with physical laboratory testing via integrated lab partners, creating an iterative experimentation loop to compress early research phases.
Additionally, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore provides infrastructure for AI agents to execute multi-step workflows, reason across enterprise datasets, and integrate with existing systems to improve operational efficiency.
Scaling Enterprise AI Deployments Globally
The initiative builds upon existing technology deployments within the organization. Using Amazon Bedrock, Novo Nordisk previously established a generative AI platform now utilized by more than 25,000 employees. This internal tool allows staff to construct customized chatbots that enhance productivity, assist in document drafting, retrieve corporate information, and support nonregulated workflows.
“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,” said Dan Sheeran, Vice President and General Manager of Healthcare and Life Sciences at AWS.
“Together, we’re building agentic AI applications that accelerate research, clinical development, manufacturing, and IT operations to help Novo Nordisk move faster end-to-end,” he added.
