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Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant behind the popular weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, just announced plans to cut 11% of its workforce as competitors like Eli Lilly continue to encroach on its market share. On September 10, Novo Nordisk shared in a press release that it intends to nix 9,000 positions out of its global workforce of 78,400. The company cited a more competitive obesity market, as well as a recent slowdown in growth, as two of the main reasons driving the move to reduce organisational complexity and costs. As the global leader in obesity and diabetes, Novo Nordisk delivers life-changing products for patients worldwide, Mike Doustdar, Novo Nordisk president and CEO, said in the release. But our markets are evolving, particularly in obesity, as it has become more competitive and consumer-driven. Our company must evolve as well. In the wake of the announcement, Novo Nordisks share price held relatively steady. However, the company has been losing steam more broadly over the past few months: Since this time last year, its stock has declined by 58%. Novo Nordisk is facing increased competition on several fronts, including from providers offering compounded versions of its drugs (which its actively fighting in court) and from fellow pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisks main rival and purveyor of the weight-loss medications Zepbound and Mounjaro. Novo Nordisk faces heightened competition For Novo Nordisks business, a top concern at the moment is the ongoing prevalence of other companies offering compoundedor non-FDA approvedversions of its brand-name drugs using the active ingredient semaglutide. Back in 2022, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared a shortage of GLP-1 medications including Ozempic and Wegovy, which permitted compounded versions of the medication under federal law. But after that shortage notice was officially lifted back in May, Novo Nordisk says the compounded versions of Ozempic and Wegovy are still being produced and sold. In June, Novo Nordisk cut ties with the telehealth company Hims & Hers Health after accusing Hims of selling alleged knock-off weight-loss drugs, and the pharmaceutical company is actively in court with dozens of other U.S. companies that it claims are similarly duping its drugs. In July, Novo Nordisk also cut its full-year 2025 guidance, which it attributed in part to compounded drug sales. For Wegovy in the US, the sales outlook reflects the persistent use of compounded GLP-1s, slower-than-expected market expansion and competition, the company said at the time. It added that, as far as Ozempic was concerned, the updated outlook is negatively impacted by competition in the U.S. Aside from companies selling compounded drugs, Novo Nordisk is also facing increasingly tough competition from Eli Lilly and its two popular FDA-approved weight-loss drugs. Eli Lillys second-quarter earnings report, released in early August, showed that sales of Mounjaro reached nearly $5.2 billion in revenue, up 68% from the same quarter last year, while sales of Zepbound reached $3.4 billion, up 172% year-over-year. Given these wins, Eli Lilly increased its full-year guidance. Around the same time, Novo Nordisk released a second-quarter report that reflected its lowered growth expectations. It appears that Novo Nordisks layoffs are part of a push to meet these challenges head-on. Per the press release, the workforce cuts are expected to deliver total annualized savings of around $1.25 billion by the end of the yearsavings that will be redirected to growth opportunities in diabetes and obesity. Doustdar added that the job cuts are part of a necessary shift in the companys mindset, so we can be faster and more agile.
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At SXSW, Fast Company asked festival goers why pizza parties fall flat as employee rewards.
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E-Commerce
Always-on internet connections have become as essential as running water, heat, and power. But a massive outage affecting Africa, Asia, and the Middle East in recent days underscores the fragility of the infrastructure that keeps us online. Some 15 subsea cables run through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea, and four were reportedly severed, significantly disrupting internet traffic. Hundreds of subsea cables lie on the sea floor, carrying nearly all global internet traffic (an estimated 99%). We had cuts in the Red Sea last year, and now were in the same boat again, so to speak, says Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik. When capacity is lost, providers must reroute traffic to the remaining links, creating latency and reliability issues. The continent-affecting internet outages, which are likely to persist because of issues accessing the area affected, have led to a renewed debate about the reliability of subsea cablesand whether there are alternatives, such as satellite-based links provided by the likes of Starlink. Although past cable outages have sometimes been deliberate, this one is widely believed to be accidental. The Red Sea is a kind of problematic area because you have all the maritime traffic coming through the Suez Canal, and theyre waiting their turn to get to the Suez, Madory explains. They have to drop an anchor while they’re waiting, and when you have a lot of ships dropping a lot of anchors in shallow water, its just a recipe for disaster. Cable cuts are often repaired quickly, but this case is more complicated because of its location off the coast of Yemen, where conflict involving the Houthis slows repair efforts. With as many as 200 incidents reported annually, the frequency of disruptions is prompting renewed interest in alternatives. One option is satellite internet, such as Starlink, which Ukraine has relied on to avoid Russian sabotage of cables. Other competitorsincluding Project Kuiper and Eutelsat OneWebare also expanding rapidly, according to a new report by equity research firm MoffettNathanson. Starlink has already amassed more than six million subscribers across countries around the world, and in regions like sub-Saharan Africa, it has become an important backstop when terrestrial connectivity fails. The theory is that outages such as the Red Sea cuts could speed up adoption in markets where consumers and businesses are willing to pay a premium for resilience. However, the service remains expensivekits cost several hundred dollars and monthly fees run higher than many local providersputting its reach beyond mass consumer adoption in lower-income areas. Still, satellites cant yet compete with fiber optics. Starlink, or any satellite service, is just not going to be able to re-create the capacity that you get on a fiber optic cable, Madory says. Subsea cables can carry three petabits of data per second, compared with 150 terabits via satellites. That gap may narrowplanned launches over the next three years could boost satellite capacity to 800 terabits a secondbut for now, subsea cables remain the backbone of the global internet.
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E-Commerce
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