Novo Nordisk owner to invest $200 million in quantum computing startups

LONDON :Novo Holdings, the controlling shareholder of Danish weight problems drugmaker Novo Nordisk, acknowledged on Wednesday it planned to make investments around $200 million in quantum computing startups.

The company, the investment arm of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, has 77 per cent of balloting shares in Novo Nordisk, which is identified for producing blockbuster weight problems drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic.

CONTEXT

Lecturers and enterprise analysts say quantum computing might possibly also masks to be amongst the most transformational technological traits of the twenty first century.

Tech companies and governments alike had been working to get machines that rob advantage of quantum mechanics, in a position to environment up scientific calculations that will in any other case rob most computer systems thousands and thousands of years.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

Asserting the records on Wednesday, Novo Holdings acknowledged it wanted to aid get an ecosystem of quantum computing startups, with a particular take care of lifestyles sciences companies essentially essentially based completely in Nordic worldwide locations.

By making employ of the skills to the enchancment of pharmaceuticals and utterly different lifestyles sciences, quantum computing companies might possibly greatly hotfoot up the drug discovery path of.

KEY QUOTE

“There are some glaring applications, corresponding to drug discovery, building quantum gadgets of proteins and seeing how they have interaction with molecules,” Soren Moller, managing partner of seed investments at Novo Holdings, suggested Reuters in an interview.

“But that it is possible you’ll possibly employ quantum across the lifestyles sciences, making sense of complex datasets or monitoring complex biological systems.”

He added: “This skills will in all probability be transformational for lifestyles sciences, but we’re at the very early stages. We plot no longer have quantum computer systems for the time being, so we imagine right here is the excellent time to lean forward and develop these investments.