Novo Nordisk VP Loïc Giraud: Hand Data to Business Users, and 8,000 Agents Can Run
After joining in 2024, Loïc Giraud, Vice President of Data and AI Foundation at Novo Nordisk, consolidated Snowflake teams spread across 80 countries into a single global function. By gradually introducing tools like CoWork and CoCo, he enabled non-IT business users to build their own agents. He states the company now has nearly 8,000 agents running, with over 60% of employees using AI weekly.
Novo Nordisk operates in 80 countries. When Loïc Giraud joined the company in 2024 as Vice President of Data and AI Foundation, its subsidiaries and affiliates were already using the Snowflake platform to handle sales, marketing, finance, and procurement data, but the teams and technology were fragmented. He chose a different approach: first centralizing the Snowflake teams and technology into a single global function, then gradually integrating more datasets, and finally introducing AI capabilities. His core belief is that data must be placed in the hands of end users so they can build their own solutions.
Giraud believes agentic AI makes this process simple, provided there are good guardrails and controls in place. The practical path involves centralization, which creates a richer platform, followed by the introduction of capabilities like CoWork (natural language data querying) and CoCo (coding agents). Once data is ingested and processed, it can be pushed to ChatGPT, Snowflake services, or other systems. He notes that approximately 25,000 people use this platform directly or indirectly.
Specific applications demonstrate how this logic is implemented. In the United States, Novo Nordisk uses CoWork agents to help sales representatives prepare for visits with healthcare professionals; reps can query databases using natural language to access information that helps position the right drugs. Translation is another scenario: product materials written in English need to be translated into multiple languages for use across 80 affiliates, a process CoWork automates. Data engineers use CoCo to build new service connections and data pipelines, which Giraud says reduces the number of engineers needed to focus on product development.