According to Reuters via LSEG Workspace data, SAP’s market cap hit $340 billion and elbowed aside Denmark’s Novo Nordisk.

There must have been a subdued celebration in the Walldorf boardrooms where executives presumably marked the occasion by comedically upgrading someone’s SAP S/4HANA licence to leave them bewildered.

SAP’s shares have been doing well, driven by the fever dream that their cloud business will ride the generative AI wave all the way to the bank. Never mind that its 2025 gains so far are a modest seven per cent—trailing even the bloated STOXX 600’s 8.3 per cent climb.

When you zoom out, it’s a different story: since the end of 2022, SAP has delivered 160 per cent return, turning its tedious middleware into magic beans for investors. 

Meanwhile, Novo Nordisk—the drug peddler that built its fortune on diabetes meds and Ozempic-style weight-loss injections—has been stumbling. Its next-gen obesity drug Cagrisema failed to impress the lab coat crowd, and the market gave it the cold shoulder.