Anthropic has appointed Novartis chief executive Vas Narasimhan to its board of directors, making him the first executive from the pharmaceutical industry to join the AI company's governing body.
Narasimhan joins existing board members including Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, president Daniela Amodei, Confluent chief executive Jay Kreps and Netflix chairman Reed Hastings.
The appointment was made by the Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust, an independent oversight body whose members hold no financial stake in the company.
Narasimhan said in a LinkedIn post that working across medicine, innovation and global health had shown him that "technology creates the most value when it's deployed responsibly."
He described AI as already accelerating some of healthcare's hardest scientific challenges, from deepening understanding of disease biology to identifying drug targets and designing medicines, but said speed alone was not the objective.
"What matters just as much is how these tools are built, governed, and ultimately applied in the real world," he wrote.
The appointment adds pharmaceutical and healthcare governance experience to a board that has until now drawn primarily from the technology industry, and signals Anthropic's interest in deepening its presence in life sciences as AI drug discovery attracts growing investment across the sector.
Narasimhan has led Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical group, since 2018 and has overseen a significant push into data science and AI-driven drug development during his tenure.
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The board addition follows a further appointment made in February and comes as Anthropic is reported to be considering an initial public offering that could take place as early as this year.
Anthropic was most recently valued at $61.5 billion following a funding round in March 2025 and has attracted investment from Amazon and Google, among others, as competition in the large language model market intensifies.
The recap
- Anthropic appoints Vas Narasimhan to its board of directors
- First pharmaceutical-industry executive to join Anthropic's governing body
- Anthropic is reportedly weighing an initial public offering this year
