Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly pay Anthropic and other AI labs for drug tools; no AI-designed drug is approved

Novo pays the labs that are learning its trade

Novo Nordisk▼−0.22% — Novo Nordisk, down 0.22 percent today reports third-quarter results on November 4 as a paying customer of both OpenAI'sPVT$1.18T — OpenAI, private, latest valuation $1.18T Rosalind life-sciences suite and AnthropicPVT$350B — Anthropic, private, latest valuation $350B, which is buying biotechs as it files to go public ³⁴. The stakes: Novo's shares are down 21% this year ¹, and Eli Lilly▲+0.50% — Eli Lilly, up 0.50 percent today holds 63% of the US market for GLP-1 drugs, the injected diabetes and obesity medicines ². Novo has already shopped outside for molecules, paying Hengrui up to $2.6 billion for an unproven pill (The Inference, October 7) ¹².

The rented layer is wide. OpenAI counts Novo and Moderna▲+4.86% — Moderna, up 4.86 percent today among Rosalind's customers ³, and Anthropic's IPO filing names Novo alongside Bristol Myers Squibb▼−1.56% — Bristol Myers Squibb, down 1.56 percent today, AbbVie▼−0.02% — AbbVie, down 0.02 percent today and Sanofi as partners ⁴. The pharmas are paying the labs to learn the drug business.

The vendors are buying into the drug business

Anthropic filed on October 26 to list on Nasdaq↗ as ANT, in an offering reported at more than $100 billion raised toward a $2trn valuation ⁴⁵. The filing discloses a molecular biology laboratory and in-house discovery work on neglected diseases ⁴⁵, and says nine of the ten largest pharmas each spent at least $100,000 with Anthropic over a recent year ⁶.

A day after filing came Mithril Medicine, a biotech whose only full-time employee used Claude across 11 contract labs to take a muscular dystrophy candidate from idea to mouse data inside 18 months, with human trials possible as soon as late 2028 ⁷, and a reported $400 million in stock bought the biotech Coefficient Bio↗ in April ⁸.

OpenAI bought tools instead on October 20: Orchestra Bio, which had raised about $20 million, its trial-tracking agents folded into Rosalind at an undisclosed price ³⁷. Isomorphic LabsPVT$600M — Isomorphic Labs, private, latest valuation $600M, spun out of Google DeepMind, runs AI models for Lilly's and Novartis's▼−1.04% — Novartis, down 1.04 percent today own programs, has raised $2.7 billion, and is still preclinical: not one of its drugs has reached human testing ⁹. Talks reported in October could value it at $40 billion or more↗ ⁹. GlobalData puts pharma AI partnership value up 120% between 2024 and 2025 ⁴.

Lilly pays because two molecules carry it

Mounjaro and Zepbound, two brands of one molecule, tirzepatide, made $16.1 billion of Lilly's $24.4 billion third-quarter revenue, up 39%↗, and tirzepatide was 65% of first-half sales ²¹⁰. Guidance rose to $91 billion to $92 billion, its second raise in three months ¹⁰, and the next injectable, retatrutide, delivered more than double the weight loss of Ozempic's highest approved dose head to head ¹⁰.

Lilly pays the labs too: 50,000 employees hold Claude accounts, and more than 85% of staff actively use them ⁶. Its other route to a pipeline cost $13.3 billion in acquisitions in the first half alone ¹⁰.

The benefit today is Lilly's: it rents the models while tirzepatide pays for them, and the risk sits with the pharma customers, Novo included, if any lab-owned candidate reaches the clinic.

No AI-designed drug has ever been approved

That approval count is still zero↗ ⁶, and Anthropic's own filing concedes any candidate faces "lengthy, costly, and uncertain" development and may never generate revenue ⁵. Isomorphic president Max Jaderberg said on November 2 that "all drugs in the future will be AI-designed," then placed his company in "first innings," still before human testing ⁹.

The dates that settle it are fixed: Novo's print on November 4 ¹, Anthropic's ANT pricing ⁴, and the first clinical trial that Isomorphic chief executive Demis Hassabis promised for the end of 2026 ⁹. Two months remain on that clock.