Novo Nordisk A/S is a Danish multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Bagsværd. Novo Nordisk is controlled by majority shareholder Novo Holdings A/S (wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation) which holds approximately 28.1% of its shares and a majority (77.1%) of its voting shares.
Novo Nordisk manufactures and markets pharmaceutical products and services, primarily diabetes and obesity medications and devices.
Novo Nordisk employs more than 48,000 people globally, and markets its products in 168 countries. The corporation was created in 1989, through a merger of two Danish companies, which date back to the 1920s. Novo Nordisk is a full member of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).
The company was ranked 25th among Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2010, and subsequently ranked 72nd in 2014 and 73rd in 2017. In January 2012, Novo Nordisk was named the most sustainable company in the world by the business magazine Corporate Knights, while spin-off company Novozymes was named fourth. It is a leader in the FTSE4Good Index, and the only European company in the top ten. Novo Nordisk is the largest pharmaceutical company in Denmark. Novo Nordisk's market capitalization exceeded the GDP of Denmark's domestic economy in 2023, and it is the highest valued company in Europe. Net sales in 2024 were US$42.121 billion.
Contents
History
Novo Nordisk traces its origins to the 1920s with the founding of Nordisk Insulin Laboratorium and Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium.
1922–1925
August Krogh and his wife Marie became interested in insulin upon hearing about it while on an American lecture tour in 1923; they modified their itinerary to meet with insulin discoverers Frederick Banting, John Macleod, Charles Best, and James Collip. August Krogh received permission to produce insulin in Denmark; Krogh and Hans Christian Hagedorn, with funding and facilities support from August Kongsted, began experimenting with means of extracting and purifying insulin from fish and rabbit pancreases.
Known as the Insulin Laboratory, the research and production arm was operated as a unit of Kongsted's pharmaceutical company, Løvens Kemiske Fabrik. Kongsted rented a factory in Emdrup, Denmark, in late 1923 to help meet the demand for insulin. The Insulin Laboratory and the factory were spun off into a new company, Nordisk Insulin Laboratorium, in July 1924. The company was founded with an associated foundation and the three men served as the board of directors for both, with the foundation board membership barring them from profiting on the sale of insulin. The foundation and Nordisk Insulin signed articles of association in 1926 and the foundation received tax-exempt status by royal decree in January 1927.
In 1925, brothers Harald and Thorvald Pedersen, who were former employees of Nordisk, formed their own company, Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium. Novo and Nordisk competed until they merged in 1989 to become Novo Nordisk A/S.
1982–1994
The company established its presence in the US in 1982 via a joint venture with Squibb Corporation and Canada in 1984. In 1985, the company introduced the first insulin pen device called Novopen.
In 1989, Novo Industri A/S (Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium) and Nordisk Gentofte A/S (Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium) merged to become Novo Nordisk A/S, the world's largest producer of insulin with headquarters in Bagsværd, Copenhagen. In 1991, Novo Nordisk Engineering (now NNE A/S) demerged after working as in-house consultants at Novo Nordisk for years, to provide standard engineering services (end-to-end engineering) to pharma manufacturing companies. In 1994, Novo Nordisk's existing information technology units was spun out as NNIT A/S. The company was converted into a wholly owned aktieselskab in 2004 In March 2015, NNIT was floated on the Nasdaq Nordic.
2000–2018
Novo's enzymes business, Novozymes A/S, was spun-out in 2000. Novo acquired Xellia for $700 million in 2013. The same year, Novo Nordisk USA moved into new headquarters offices in Plainsboro Township, New Jersey, by way of extensively renovating abandoned premises. This action served to consolidate several facilities that the company had previously had in Plainsboro.
In 2015, the company announced it would collaborate with Ablynx, using its nanobody technology to develop at least one new drug candidate. In January 2018, Reuters reported that Novo had offered to acquire Ablynx for $3.1 billion - having made an unreported offer in mid-December for the company. However, the Ablynx board rejected this offer the same day, explaining that the price undervalued the business. Ultimately Novo lost out to Sanofi who bid $4.8 billion. Later, in the same year, the company announced it would acquire Ziylo for around $800 million.
2020–present
In March 2020, Novo volunteers started testing samples for SARS-CoV-2 with RT-qPCR equipment in the ongoing coronavirus pandemic to increase available test capacity. In June, the business announced it would acquire AstraZeneca's cardiovascular disease-focused spin-off Corvidia Therapeutics for an initial sum of $725 million (up to a performance-related maximum of $2.1 billion). In November, the company announced it would acquire Emisphere Technologies for $1.8 billion, gaining control of a pill-based treatment for diabetes. Novo then announced in December that it would acquire Emisphere Technologies for $1.35 billion.
In November 2021, Novo announced it would acquire Dicerna Pharmaceuticals and its RNAi therapeutics, for $3.3 billion ($38.25 per share).
In September 2022, Novo agreed to acquire Forma Therapeutics for $1.1 billion with the intent to expand its sickle cell disease and rare blood disorders portfolio.
By 2022 the popularity of Novo's Wegovy and Ozempic for weight loss was so great as to significantly increase the growth of the entire economy of Denmark. Two-thirds of Denmark's overall economic growth in 2022 was attributed to the pharmaceutical industry. The company's profits increased by 45% year over year in the first half of 2023. Most of the growth occurred from its weight loss drugs, Wegovy and Ozempic, which accounted for 55% of the company's 2023 revenue.
In August 2023, Novo agreed to acquire the Montreal-headquartered pharmaceutical company, Inversago Pharma for $1 billion and Embark Biotech for up to $500 million. In October 2023, the company announced it would acquire ocedurenone—an experimental drug for uncontrolled hypertension and potentially beneficial in treating cardiovascular and kidney diseases—from KBP Biosciences for $1.3 billion. After a failed clinical trial the following year, Novo Nordisk initiated legal action against KBP alleging that the company misrepresented the drug's effectiveness by concealing unfavorable clinical trial data. Seeking up to $830 million in damages, the Singapore International Commercial Court granted Novo Nordisk's request for a freeze on KBP's assets and those of its founder, Huang Zhenhua.
In November 2023, Novo Nordisk announced investment of €2.1 billion in a French production facility to increase the production capacity and manufacturing of its popular anti-obesity medication.
Products
Novo Nordisk makes the drug semaglutide, used to treat diabetes under the brand names Ozempic and Rybelsus and obesity under the brand name Wegovy. Novo Nordisk is also involved with hemostasis management, growth hormone therapy, and hormone replacement therapy. The company makes several drugs under various brand names, including Levemir, Tresiba, NovoLog, Novolin R, NovoSeven, NovoEight, and Victoza.
Toxicogenomics
Novo Nordisk is involved in government funded collaborative research projects with other industrial and governmental partners. One example in the area of non-clinical safety assessment is the InnoMed PredTox. The company is expanding its activities in joint research projects within the framework of the Innovative Medicines Initiative of European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations and the European Commission.
Research and pipeline
In 2025, Novo Nordisk tested whether semaglutide helped slow progression for Alzheimer’s disease. However, on Nov. 24, 2025, the company announced that the studies failed to find any effect of the drug on cognition and functioning in people with mild cognitive impairment or with dementia.
Novo Nordisk was researching pulmonary delivery systems for diabetic medications, and in the early stages of research into autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases, using technologies such as translational immunology and monoclonal antibodies. In September 2014, the company announced a decision to discontinue all research in inflammatory disorders, including the discontinuation of R&D in anti-IL-20 for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.
In September 2018, it was reported that the company would lay off 400 administrative staff, laboratory technicians and scientists, in Denmark and China in order to concentrate research and development efforts on “transformational biological and technological innovation”.
Controversies
In 2010, Novo Nordisk breached the code of conduct for Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), by failing to provide information about side-effects of Victoza and by promoting Victoza prior to being granted market authorisation.
In 2013, Novo Nordisk had to pay back 3.6 kr. billion to the Danish tax authorities due to transfer mispricing.
In March 2013, a debate emerged in which scientists questioned whether the incretin class of diabetic medications – the class to which Victoza belongs – had an increased risk of side effects in the pancreas such as pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. It was concluded that data currently available did not confirm these concerns.
In October 2013, batches of NovoMix 30 FlexPen and Penfill insulin were recalled in some European countries as their analysis had shown that a small percentage of the products in these batches did not meet the specifications for insulin strength.
In September 2017, Novo Nordisk agreed to pay $58.7 million to end a United States Department of Justice probe into the lack of FDA disclosure to doctors about the cancer risk for their diabetic drug, Victoza.
In March 2023, Novo Nordisk was suspended from the ABPI for a period of two years, for engaging in misleading marketing practices that amounted to "bribing health professionals with inducement to prescribe". This is only the eighth time in the last 40 years that ABPI sanctioned a member organization. Consequently, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Physicians ended their corporate partnerships as it would be in breach of their ethical guidance. The Novo Nordisk UK General Manager, Pinder Sahota, chose to resign as President of the ABPI prior to the suspension.
In August 2023, one of the first lawsuits was filed alleging that Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro (tirzepatide) caused severe gastrointestinal side effects, including gastroparesis. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of Jaclyn Bjorklund, a Louisiana woman represented by Morgan & Morgan, who alleged that she suffered persistent vomiting and other serious injuries after using the drugs and that the manufacturers failed to adequately warn patients and physicians about the risks.
Corporate affairs
Finances
For the fiscal year 2024, Novo Nordisk reported earnings of DKK 101 billion (around 14.5 billion USD), with an annual revenue of DKK 290.4 billion (around 42.1 billion USD), an increase of 25% over the previous fiscal cycle.
Ownership
Novo Nordisk shares are mostly owned by institutional investors and Novo Holdings A/S. The largest shareholders in 2025 were:
Novo Holdings A/S (28.1%)
BlackRock (4.1%)
The Vanguard Group (2.9%)
Norges Bank (1.8%)