In April, Anthropic put Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan on its board. This morning Novartis did the reverse and nominated Ra

TL;DR

Novartis nominated Rajesh Jha, who spent 36 years at Microsoft, to its board. Jha will have no line role at Novartis, and his influence comes through his questions and his vote. I see the big AI labs much more as enablers and accelerators of science and pharma processes. I expect more talent to move between the two worlds.

In April, Anthropic put Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan on its board. This morning Novartis did the reverse and nominated Rajesh Jha, who spent 36 years at Microsoft and helped bring AI into its products, to the Novartis board.

Jha retired from Microsoft in July. He ran Experiences + Devices, the group behind Microsoft 365, Teams and Windows, and under him Microsoft built models from OpenAI and Anthropic into Copilot. Novartis explicitly says his experience in AI and large-scale digital platforms "would add significantly" to the board.

What a Swiss board member actually does

The board title often gets overread, so it helps to be precise about what a board member at a Swiss listed company does. Swiss law gives the board a short list of duties it can't hand off, among them the company's overall direction, its organization, financial control, and appointing and supervising executive management.

Running the business sits with the executive committee. Jha will have no line role at Novartis. His influence comes through the questions he asks when management brings strategy, budgets and risk to the board, and through his vote.

That's also how I previously commented on Vas's seat at Anthropic. He brings the judgment of someone who runs a regulated industry with decade-long timelines, which is critical for a company that is about to go public.

When Jessica Davis Pluess interviewed me for SWI swissinfo.ch three weeks ago, I said I see the big AI labs much more as enablers and accelerators of science and pharma processes. I expect more talent to move between the two worlds. We are just seeing the beginning of this.