AI frontrunner Anthropic has appointed Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan to its board of directors, further cementing a central role for advanced machine learning models in drug development.<\/p>\n
As part of Anthropic\u2019s board, Narasimhan will help ensure that the company \u201cresponsibly balances\u201d its mission of advancing AI for the benefit of humanity and its obligation to deliver value to shareholders, Neil Shah, chair of Anthropic\u2019s Long-Term Benefit Trust, said in a\u00a0prepared statement<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday. The Trust, which selected Narasimhan, operates independently of Anthropic and is populated by members with no financial stake in the company.<\/p>\n In his own statement, Narasimhan also pointed to the AI outfit\u2019s public benefit mission.<\/p>\n \u201cAnthropic is setting the standard for how AI should be developed to benefit humanity,\u201d he said in a statement, adding that for the healthcare and life sciences sectors, AI is helping to improve understanding of disease biology and aid drug design, in turn \u201caccelerating solutions to some of the hardest scientific challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n In recent months, Anthropic has made a clear turn toward healthcare, putting more and more money into tailoring its models to fit the needs of the life sciences industry. In October 2025, for example, the company rolled out\u00a0Claude Life Sciences<\/a>, a version of its AI model geared specifically toward biopharma professionals, including clinical trial coordinators, regulatory managers and researchers.<\/p>\n Novartis\u2019 Big Pharma peers, including\u00a0Sanofi, Novo Nordisk<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0AbbVie<\/a>, have bought into Anthropic\u2019s services, and the company has also built ties with other smaller biopharma players, including\u00a0Genmab<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a010X Genomics<\/a>.<\/p>\n