Novo Nordisk Signs Up To $1.4 Billion Licensing Deal With Orbis Medicines

09:56 AM EDT, 09/17/2026 (MT Newswires) -- Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk (NVO) and Orbis Medicines struck an up to $1.4 billion licensing deal for the private company to develop oral drugs for cardiometabolic diseases. Denmark-based Orbis could receive up to $1.4 billion in upfront and milestone payments, plus royalties on future product sales, the company said Thursday. Novo will also make a "strategic investment" in Orbis. Novo's shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange were most recently up 2.2%, lowering year-to-date losses to 16%. The companies aim to accelerate the development of a new class of orally available medicines for cardiometabolic diseases, leveraging Orbis' artificial intelligence-enabled macrocycle discovery platform and Novo's expertise in obesity and cardiometabolic disease. Macrocycles are compounds with cyclic structures designed to target a wide range of protein targets, according to information available on Orbis' website. "This collaboration reinforces that the future of oral biologic drug discovery lies at the intersection of AI," Orbis Chief Executive Morten Graugaard said in a statement. "Together with Novo, we have an opportunity to unlock a new generation of oral medicines for cardiometabolic diseases and demonstrate the transformative potential of AI-enabled macrocycle drug discovery." Brian Vandahl, senior vice president of therapeutics discovery at Novo, said the collaboration can help "unlock innovative oral treatment options" for cardiometabolic diseases and expand the potential of macrocycle therapeutics. On Wednesday, Novo agreed to collaborate with AI firm Anthropic to help accelerate the discovery and development of new medicines, following similar partnerships with Amazon.com's (AMZN) cloud-computing unit, Amazon Web Services, and GenAI chatbot ChatGPT maker OpenAI. In February, Novo agreed to license certain of Vivtex's oral drug-delivery technologies for obesity, diabetes and related conditions in a deal worth up to $2.1 billion. In March 2025, the pharmaceutical giant secured exclusive global rights to United Laboratories International's therapeutic candidate for obesity and type 2 diabetes in a deal worth up to $2 billion. In June, Eli Lilly (LLY) entered into a collaboration and licensing agreement worth over $1 billion with Swedish pharmaceutical company AlzeCure Pharma for global rights to its investigative candidate for Alzheimer's disease.