1922-1925 In 1922,
August Krogh, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, went on a lecture tour to North America after receiving the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. During this tour, Krogh and his wife
Marie visited Toronto where the scientists
Frederick Banting,
Charles Best and
John Macleod had just succeeded in manufacturing active insulin. Krogh received permission to manufacture insulin in the Nordic countries and joined forces with
Hans Christian Hagedorn, a physician specialising in diabetes, to start the production of insulin in Denmark. This led to the establishment of Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium company in 1923. 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 United States 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.
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. 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. In February 2024, parent company
Novo Holdings A/S agreed to acquire
Catalent for $16.5billion. On completion, Novo Nordisk said it would acquire three manufacturing facilities from its parent for $11billion to scale up production to meet the massive demand for Wegovy and Ozempic. In March 2024, Novo Nordisk reached a $604 billion market capitalization and became the 12th most valuable company in the world. The company's stock jumped to a record high after early trial data showed positive results for its new experimental weight loss pill
amycretin. The company also announced it would acquire Cardior Pharmaceuticals and its cardiovascular disease portfolio for up to $1.1 billion. As of April 2024, the flow of cash from Novo Nordisk's weight-loss drugs was continuing to solidify its status as the most valuable company in Europe, to the point that economists were worried that Denmark might come down with
Dutch disease (that is, a country that does only one thing well and nothing else). The company's market capitalization of $570 billion remained larger than the entire economy of Denmark, its $2.3 billion income tax bill for 2023 made it the largest taxpayer in the country, and its rapid growth was driving nearly all of the expansion of Denmark's economy. To effectively manage the rapid expansion of its workforce while maintaining its traditional corporate culture, the Novo Nordisk Way, the company put over 400 senior executives through a
leadership development program called NNX, which stands for Novo Nordisk Next. In June 2024, the company announced plans to build a new production plant in
Clayton, North Carolina, at a cost of $4.1 billion. It will be the company's fourth in the state of
North Carolina and used for production of
semaglutide products Ozempic and Wegovy. The company also announced plans to acquire three US-based Catalent sites in to increase production supply. As of October 2024, Novo Nordisk was the second most valuable drug company in the world by market capitalization, second only to its competitor
Eli Lilly and Company. By July 2025, Novo Nordisk had fallen to become the fifth most valuable drug company amid rising competition from generic weight loss substitutes. The company named Maziar Mike Doustdar as the new CEO, effective August 7, 2025. In March 2025, the company announced new plans for a direct-to-consumer offering of its Wegovy weight loss drug. The company established a new pharmacy, called NovoCare, which would charge customers $499 per month for access to the drug, less than half the cost of the drug through other pharmaceutical distribution networks. In September 2025, Novo Nordisk announced that it would reduce its global workforce by 9,000 people, approximately 9% of its total workforce. In October 2025, Novo Nordisk acquired Akero Therapeutics for $5.2 billion. Akero Therapeutics is a clinical stage company focusing on the treatment of
metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH). In November 2025, United States President
Donald Trump announced a deal with NovoNordisk to lower the costs of Ozempic, including monthly prices of about $245 for injectables and $149 for some oral versions for people on
Medicare and
Medicaid and for those who use his
TrumpRx platform. In 2026, new obesity GLP-1 pills were launched, with patients getting their hands on them from Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk. == Products ==