Novo Nordisk, the company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, is now Europe’s largest company as global demand for its drugs have soared. 

But the Danish pharmaceutical company’s origins were motivated by more personal reasons, not financial. 

The company was launched in the early 1920s by Nobel laureate August Krogh and his wife Marie, a doctor living with diabetes. At the time, diabetes was a death sentence. The couple met at the Danish Medical School, where August was Marie’s professor.

“He fell in love with her right away,” said Hanne Sindbaek, a Danish journalist and author of two books about Novo Nordisk and the Kroghs.

While on a trip to North America they learned that Canadian scientists were working on a miracle cure for diabetes: insulin.They traveled to Toronto and came home to Denmark with the rights to manufacture the life-saving drug in Scandinavia. 

Launching the world’s largest philanthropic organization

There was a catch when the Canadians shared the insulin formula with the Kroghs.

“They asked that nobody should profit from it,” Sindbaek said. “It should be to the benefit of humanity. It was a way to get this life-saving drug out in the world fast.”

Back in Denmark, the Kroghs set up the Nordisk Insulin Company. To keep their agreement with the Canadian scientists, they established a nonprofit foundation, which today controls 77% of the  voting shares. Today it is the largest philanthropic organization in the world, bigger than the Gates Foundation.

“The agreement was that if there were revenues and proceeds from the sales of insulin here in Scandinavia, it should be returned to society in the form of support for research into physiology and medicine,” said Mads Krogsgaard, the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s CEO. 

In 2023, the foundation awarded more than $1 billion to projects in education, health and development projects around the world. 

Novo Nordisk faces pricing complaints

In the years since its founding, Novo Nordisk has grown to be worth $600 billion, and yet current CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen — only the fifth in the company’s history — has a compensation package of roughly $10 million, an amount dwarfed by his U.S. counterparts. When asked about the pressures of running the biggest company in Europe, he defers to the company mantra, the Novo Nordisk Way.

“So the Novo Nordisk way is the basic thinking of our founders. And key elements linked to how we treat each other, how we collaborate,” Jørgensen said. “And that’s about being open and honest. It’s all about being accountable.”

In the U.S. however, there is a growing chorus of complaints over the costs of Ozempic and Wegovy led by Sen. Bernie Sanders. Novo Nordisk’s CEO appeared before Sanders and his Senate subcommittee on Sept. 24.

Sanders excoriated Jørgensen over allegations of price gouging, saying the company’s U.S. prices are unaffordable for those who need the drugs the most. Novo Nordisk’s response is that the drugs’ benefits to global health will, ultimately, save health care systems trillions of dollars. The company also blames America’s fractured health care system for the high prices.