Novo Nordisk has announced a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), naming it its preferred cloud provider and strategic AI partner, with the shared goal of accelerating drug discovery and modernising the company’s technology infrastructure to prepare for the next generation of medicines.
The announcement, made in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, marks a formal expansion of a longstanding relationship between the two organisations. At the heart of the agreement is a newly established co-innovation hub in London, where engineers and scientists from both companies are working side by side, using AWS AI technologies alongside Novo Nordisk’s proprietary data and research insights to compress the journey from drug target identification to first human dose.
A Hub Built for Scientific Acceleration
The London co-innovation hub brings together AWS Forward Deployed Engineers, AI specialists, and applied scientists alongside Novo Nordisk’s research and development teams. The hub is designed to increase productivity and help reduce the time to market for future medicines.
Mike Doustdar, President and CEO of Novo Nordisk, commented on the partnership: “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, while also creating a dedicated co-innovation hub within our existing facility in London, we are accelerating discovery and developing responsible AI solutions that will create real progress for people living with serious chronic diseases.”
Novo Nordisk has already recorded measurable outcomes from its early collaboration with AWS, including reduced clinical documentation time and productivity gains for more than 25,000 employees across the organisation.
Leveraging AWS Technologies Across the Drug Development Pipeline
Under the expanded agreement, Novo Nordisk will make use of several AWS services tailored to the life sciences sector. These include Amazon Bio Discovery and Amazon Bedrock, which will support the identification of drug targets, enable faster design of new therapies, and connect genomic, imaging, and clinical data so that insights from early-stage research can directly inform clinical trial design.
The company will also leverage Amazon Bedrock AgentCore to drive operational efficiencies through the deployment of AI agents across its business functions. Agentic AI is positioned as a central element of Novo Nordisk’s broader strategy to modernise its operations and strengthen its infrastructure.
Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, underlined the shared purpose behind the collaboration: “Every part of our work with Novo Nordisk comes back to one thing: getting the right medicine to patients, faster. Novo Nordisk has chosen AWS as their strategic AI partner to fundamentally change how medicines are discovered and developed using services such as Amazon Bio Discovery and Amazon Bedrock. 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.”
Broader Collaboration Across Amazon’s Healthcare Ecosystem
Beyond the core cloud and AI partnership, Novo Nordisk also collaborates with multiple Amazon businesses that support the healthcare sector. These include Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Ads, and Amazon One Medical — collaborations aimed at transforming how new therapies are marketed and delivered to patients.
The agreement brings together Novo Nordisk’s deep therapeutic expertise in chronic diseases with AWS’s globally recognised cloud and AI capabilities, secure and scalable infrastructure, and purpose-built life sciences technologies. Together, the two organisations are building what they describe as a secure foundation to turn scientific ideas into new therapies for patients around the world.
The drug discovery AI co-innovation hub in London stands as a concrete expression of how this partnership intends to deliver results — not just at the level of strategy, but at the level of science.
