April 14 (Reuters) – Anthropic on Tuesday added Novartis’ Chief Executive Officer Vas Narasimhan to its board of directors, making him the first executive from the pharmaceutical industry to join the AI startup’s governing body.
* Narasimhan joins Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, PresidentDaniela Amodei, Confluent CEO Jay Kreps, Netflix chairman ReedHastings, and others on the board. * This marks the second new board addition after the Claudechatbot developer added Chris Liddell, a former Microsoftexecutive to its board in February. * Narasimhan has been appointed to Anthropic’s board by theAnthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust, an independent body whosemembers have no financial stake in the company. * Anthropic is reportedly weighing an initial publicoffering that could take place as early as this year. * In a LinkedIn post, the Novartis CEO said that “workingacross medicine, innovation, and global health has helped merealize that technology creates the most value when it’sdeployed responsibly.” * “In healthcare AI is already accelerating some of ourhardest scientific challenges – from deepening our understandingof disease biology to helping identify promising targets anddesign better medicines. But speed alone isn’t the goal”Narasimhan noted, adding “what matters just as much is how thesetools are built, governed, and ultimately applied in the realworld.”
(Reporting by Kunal Das in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)