Last year Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, overtook LVMH to become Europe’s most valuable company. And the pull for Acquired to finally tackle healthcare (18% of US GDP!) became too strong for us to resist. While we didn’t know much about Novo Nordisk before diving in, our first thought was, “wow, seems like these new diabetes and obesity drugs mean serious trouble for big insulin companies.”And then… we realized that Novo Nordisk IS the big insulin company. And in a story befitting of Steve Jobs and Apple, they’d just disrupted themselves with the drug equivalent of an iPhone moment. Once we dug further, we quickly realized this company has it all: an incredible 100+ year history filled with Nobel Prizes, bitter personal rivalries, board room dramas, a generation-defining silicon valley innovation, lone voices persevering against all odds — and oh yeah, the world’s largest charitable foundation at its helm. Tune in for one incredible story!Sponsors:Anrok: https://bit.ly/anrokacquiredStatsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig24Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acqclaudeMore Acquired!:Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodesJoin the SlackSubscribe to ACQ2Merch Store!© Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLCLinks:Chart: US Healthcare Spend by CategoryChart: US Distribution and Reimbursement System (for pharmaceutical drugs)Chart: Insulin Supply ChainYouTube Talk: What People Get Wrong about the Finances of the Drug IndustryAlex Telford: The pharma industry from Paul Janssen to today: why drugs got harder to develop and what we can do about itOut-of-Pocket Health: Obesity DrugsOut-of-Pocket Health: US Healthcare System ProblemsAll episode sourcesCarve Outs:Noxgear Tracer 2 running vestDrops of GodWool by Hugh HoweyMere Mortals at San Francisco BalletBlackberryNote: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.
Full Episode
All right, first episode back. Let's see if I can do this sleep deprived. Oh, you and me both, man. Welcome to Season 14, Episode 1 of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert. I'm David Rosenthal. And we are your hosts. Today's episode is on the company behind these sensational diabetes and weight loss drugs, Ozempic and WeGoVie.
The company is Novo Nordisk. Now, when I first learned about Ozempic a few years ago, I thought, of course, this is going to be amazing for a lot of people. And could also completely destroy the market for insulin. Those insulin companies better watch out. But here is the fascinating thing, listeners. Novo Nordisk is the company behind insulin, or at least one of the few big ones.
Now, you might say, well, that's okay, because they're probably a big pharmaceutical company that's, you know, very diversified with lots of different drugs. Nope. No. Novo Nordisk is unique in that the vast majority of their revenue is concentrated in the category of metabolic health. They have been the insulin and diabetes company for the last 100 years.
And perhaps even more surprising, this pharma giant is unique in that they are owned and controlled by a non-profit foundation. The stats around weight, diabetes, and its impact on our society are staggering. There are 38 million Americans with diabetes. That's one in 10 people. Globally, that number is over 500 million with the disease. Diabetes costs the U.S. alone more than $327 billion a year.
And on the other side of things, in the weight category, Around a billion people suffer from obesity worldwide. A billion, including 40% of the U.S. population. If you expand that from obesity to overweight, 75% of Americans are technically overweight.
It is really hard to imagine a bigger market to go after, which is why Novo Nordisk has become Europe's largest company, surpassing even LVMH last year, David.
Yeah, it's wild. I mean, there are no other disease and drug categories besides diabetes and obesity that this could be possible to have a company of this size to have a pharma giant pretty much just focused on this one area. Like this is the Hermes of the pharma industry.
Yeah. So why is today, in the early 2020s, the moment in human history for these new GLP-1 drugs? The crazy thing is, semaglutide, the molecule in Ozempic and Wegovy, was pioneered back by Novo Nordisk with the first trial in 2008 for type 2 diabetes treatment. And it was built on research started in the early 90s.
But here we are in 2023, almost three decades later, talking about it as a weight loss drug that sort of magically appeared out of nowhere, or that's at least the public perception of it. Incredibly, the fact that GLP-1 drugs could be used to reduce food intake was actually discovered way back in the mid-90s in the first sort of scientific publication about it.
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