Danish pharmaceutical company headquartered in Bagsværd, just outside Copenhagen. Founded more than a century ago to make insulin; the company's headquarters centre on a spiral staircase modelled on the insulin molecule. Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen served as chief executive from January 2017 until the board ousted him in May 2025; Maziar Mike Doustdar, formerly head of Novo's non-American business, took over in August. Novo makes Ozempic, a GLP-1 agonist prescribed for diabetes since 2017, and Wegovy, a version aimed specifically at weight loss launched in America in June 2021. Around a decade before that, Novo's scientists noticed that semaglutide, a promising diabetes drug, also suppressed appetite, setting off the effort to create a new class of weight-loss treatments. Wegovy generated $8.2bn in revenue in its first full year of competition with Eli Lilly's Zepbound. However, Novo's share price has fallen sharply as Lilly's more effective drugs have gained ground.
Wegovy was on America's official shortage list until February 2025, leaving Novo exposed to "compounding" pharmacies that may copy branded drugs during shortages at much lower prices. Novo says compounders, which often procure active ingredients from China, account for 30% of all anti-obesity prescriptions in America; 80% of those preparations use semaglutide, Novo's patented molecule. Novo has filed 130 lawsuits against the copycats and has already won 44, according to Bernstein, a broker. The FDA looks poised to crack down on compounders over their links to Chinese factories lacking its stamp of approval.
Novo's prospective Zepbound rival, CagriSema—a cocktail of cagrilintide and semaglutide—tied with Zepbound in trials rather than beating it. Injections of cagrilintide alone produce somewhat smaller average weight loss but with many fewer side-effects, an appealing trade-off for people who need to lose fewer kilos. On September 17th 2025 Novo reported that a tablet version of Wegovy, popped daily rather than injected weekly, is comparable in effectiveness to injectable semaglutide. Novo also has an oral pill awaiting approval in America, but it is costly to make, uses the same active ingredient as Wegovy, and must be taken first thing in the morning with minimal water, followed by a 30-minute wait before eating. David Risinger of Leerink Partners, an investment bank, doubts Novo will launch it globally.
Novo Nordisk encodes its culture in a set of principles called the Novo Nordisk Way. A set of ten norms known as "essentials" guide decision-making. Experienced "facilitators" travel the world, speaking with leaders and employees in various units, and reporting back to bosses in Copenhagen about the state of the culture.
In November 2025 Novo Nordisk was in a bidding war with Pfizer over Metsera, a developer of anti-obesity drugs. Pfizer raised its offer from $7bn in September to $10bn. Pfizer won. Doustdar said he was unbothered; treating hundreds of millions of patients requires openness to outside ideas. Novo has traditionally relied on its own labs rather than acquisitions, but that is changing: Doustdar wants to build a broad portfolio of obesity drugs to offer each patient the treatment best suited to their needs.
Wegovy was approved by Chinese regulators in 2024, but Novo focused first on rich markets, particularly America, which accounts for four-fifths of GLP-1 sales. In March 2025 Novo earmarked $2bn to license a promising experimental weight-loss drug developed in China. Semaglutide patents will expire in early 2026 in several emerging markets, including Brazil, China, India and Turkey, opening the door to generics.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation, which owns more than a quarter of the drugmaker's shares, reasserted itself after Jørgensen's ouster. Its chairman, Lars Rebien Sørensen, who ran Novo before Jørgensen, rebuked the board for being "too slow" to grasp the shifts in the market for weight-loss drugs. After a purge in October 2025 in which seven board members resigned, Sørensen took over as the drugmaker's chairman. In September 2025 Novo announced it would cut 9,000 jobs—more than a tenth of its workforce, including about 5,000 in Denmark, the biggest lay-off ever in the country. It also halted the development of any drug not tied to diabetes or obesity.
Novo vastly underestimated the appetite for Wegovy. It planned for demand to be three times that of Saxenda, an older and less-effective obesity drug—but five weeks after Wegovy's American launch, the drug had notched up the equivalent of four years' worth of Saxenda prescriptions. Production could not keep pace, landing Wegovy on America's official shortage list and exposing it to compounding pharmacies. Approximately 1m Americans use compound copycats.
Just as supply was coming up short, Eli Lilly launched Zepbound. Lilly had observed Novo's mis-steps and begun ramping up production well before it gained approval; the drug has been readily available since October 2024. By 2023 Wegovy's American sales had reached $4.3bn. But by 2030 Lilly will control more than half of the global market for obesity drugs, compared with just a third for Novo, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. At its peak in June 2024 Novo was Europe's most valuable company; its market value has since fallen sharply.
Lilly realised early on that selling weight-loss drugs is unlike peddling most other medicines: demand has been driven by patients themselves, many of whom pay directly. From early 2024 Lilly began bypassing intermediaries and going straight to patients. Novo was late to adapt, launching its own direct offering a year after Lilly. In April 2025 it set up a partnership with Hims & Hers, a telehealth company, but this quickly collapsed, partly because the provider kept selling Wegovy copycats. Direct channels currently account for a tenth of Wegovy prescriptions in America. Novo has struck deals with retailers including Costco and Walmart to sell its drugs, and recently began offering Wegovy directly for $199 for the first two months, rising to $349 thereafter. Doustdar says Novo must build a "consumer mindset" and think "more like Amazon". In November 2025 both Novo and Lilly struck deals with the Trump administration to provide Medicare with discounted access to their obesity drugs, at roughly a third less than commercial-insurer prices. In return, Medicare agreed to cover the treatments for the first time.
Two new products are planned for 2026. One is an oral version of Wegovy that, in trials, produced more weight loss than Lilly's competing pill. Analysts worry patients may balk at the requirement to take it on an empty stomach and wait half an hour before eating; Novo's chief scientist, Martin Lange, dismisses the concern, noting that diabetics already take oral semaglutide without fuss. The second is a higher-dose Wegovy injection that achieved weight loss comparable with Zepbound in trials. This time, Novo will have ample production capacity in place.
Novo's parent company, Novo Holdings, completed the $16.5bn purchase of Catalent, an American manufacturer, in December 2024, boosting production in the country—handy as Donald Trump prepares tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals. Over the past four years Novo's cumulative capital expenditure has exceeded $28bn. Capex eats 18% of revenue, up from 15% three years ago. Analysts expect Novo to hold 40% of a $90bn-plus weight-loss drug market by 2030. Over 160 new obesity drugs are currently in development. Semaglutide will lose patent protection in several big emerging markets in 2026. Lilly has a formidable pipeline of its own and experience across a wider range of diseases, which may be an advantage as obesity drugs are increasingly used to treat adjacent conditions such as kidney and liver problems.
Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.