# Novo Nordisk Danish pharma company — founded 1923 to manufacture the then-new insulin — that became, briefly, Europe's most valuable company on the back of Ozempic and Wegovy. It matters to this KB as the second member of the insulin cartel (with [[Eli Lilly]] and [[Sanofi]]), as Lilly's foil in the GLP-1 wars, and as a foreign company navigating Trump-era tariff leverage into a most-favored-nation pricing deal. ## Insulin to Ozempic Novo's U.S. insulin list prices rose in near-lockstep with Lilly's for two decades — same class-action allegations, same 2023 capitulation on list-price cuts after the [[Inflation Reduction Act]]'s $35 Medicare cap, and its NovoLog/Fiasp insulins were among the first ten drugs selected for IRA Medicare price negotiation. Semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) then transformed the company — and made it a culture-war object: the "Ozempic face"/"Big Food vs. Big Pharma" discourse, [[MAHA]] ambivalence (GLP-1s treat the chronic disease MAHA campaigns on, using exactly the pharmaceutical dependency MAHA abhors), and compounding-pharmacy gray markets that ate its U.S. sales. ## Stumble and Deal 2025 was brutal: a 53% share-price slide, trial setbacks, [[Eli Lilly]]'s Zepbound outperforming Wegovy, and persistent compounded-semaglutide competition led the controlling Novo Nordisk Foundation to force out CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen in May; insider Maziar Mike Doustdar took over in August with cuts and a U.S. refocus. In November 2025, alongside Lilly, Novo signed the Trump administration's GLP-1 deal: $245/month for Medicare/Medicaid, TrumpRx pricing, MFN pledges on new launches — tariff-exposure relief for a foreign manufacturer being the unspoken consideration. See [[Most-Favored-Nation Drug Pricing Deals]] for the full timeline and [[Big Pharma]] for the deal-template analysis. ## Connections - [[Eli Lilly]] — Insulin cartel partner; GLP-1 arch-rival - [[Big Pharma]] — Hub; insulin cartel and MFN-deal analysis - [[Inflation Reduction Act]] — Insulin cap + first-round negotiation list - [[Donald Trump]] — November 2025 GLP-1 deal - [[MAHA]] — The GLP-1 ambivalence worth tracking