Will AI help Denmark avoid its Nokia moment as Ozempic boom starts fading?

Business Standard

28-04-2025

Remember Nokia Oyj, Finland's economic miracle that turned to dust? The Danes do. Their own mini-boom of recent years has been largely fueled by one firm, Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk A/S, whose diabetes and weight-loss medications are under competitive assault from US rival Eli Lilly & Co. Novo's share price has halved in six months; it's given up its crown of Europe's most valuable firm to SAP SE.
This reflects deflating hype rather than a crisis. Novo sales are still forecast to grow at double-digit rates this year, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, with Denmark's economy set to grow above the European average. But throw in the risk of a Trump tariff war over Greenland, and you can see why there's more fear than there used to be of a Nokia moment in a small export-reliant country of 6 million whose multinationals like AP Moller Maersk A/S and Vestas Wind Systems A/S punch well above their weight.
'I'm starting to get worried,' says Martin Jes Iversen, a professor at the Copenhagen Business School, whose research shows a small group of very big firms — including Novo — has become critical to the economy. Novo's disproportionate share of profits and research spending was also highlighted by University of Virginia Professor Herman Mark Schwartz in a 2023 essay called The Nokia Risk, which warned that Denmark lacked the kind of home-grown artificial-intelligence firms that might drive more disruptive innovation.
Hence why it's encouraging to see the spoils of Denmark's Ozempic success being reinvested in potentially more future-proof projects like the recently unveiled supercomputer Gefion. Designed specifically for big AI projects, Gefion — named after the Norse goddess of fertility — was funded to the tune of $87 million by Novo's nonprofit foundation, the firm's majority voting shareholder, in partnership with Nvidia Corp., which supplied the chips.
Aside from the optics of spreading the Ozempic wealth around, this supercomputer opens up potential for AI research and startups in Denmark and Europe, which is desperate to attract talent and reverse years of disappointing growth. One startup, Teton.ai, used Gefion as part of a pilot access scheme to crunch data for tech that helps nurses monitor patients and cut workload; Chief Executive Officer Mikkel Wad Thorsen tells me computing power is a scarce resource and that Gefion is a sign Denmark is taking AI seriously.
And while the potential for AI in drug discovery and eradicating disease is a much-hyped and far-off thing, it should also be noted that Gefion is part of a national plan to widen and streamline research access to Danes' health data, which was one of the recommendations in Mario Draghi's report to pull Europe out of its 'slow agony.' This isn't just for Novo's benefit — the Gefion investment was at arm's length and carries no ownership rights — but there might be positive spillover effects of this kind of research for Danish and European health care.
In the short term, there isn't much to move the needle here for stressed-out shareholders of Novo and other big Danish companies. The more obvious defences that Denmark has against a trade shock are its government budget surplus and its 'flexicurity' model that combines flexibility on corporate layoffs with a secure social safety net. That and the hope that being highly exposed to pharmaceuticals isn't quite the same risk as being exposed to cellphones and paper mills, which Danske Bank economist Las Olsen says exacerbated Finland's post-Nokia blues.
Longer term, though, Danes will be hoping that Gefion and other projects like the robotics hub of Odense serve as a hedge against chaos. It could mean more researchers, more tech brains and more productivity gains on a continent desperately in need of all three. Maybe building geopolitical muscle is a surprise side effect of losing weight via Ozempic.