The boom in weight-loss drugs may have transformed the obesity market, but Novo Nordisk’s CEO says the industry is still only scratching the surface with tens of millions of Americans potentially eligible for treatment.

Novo Nordisk President and CEO Mike Doustdar joined FOX Business’ Cheryl Casone on “Mornings with Maria” to discuss the adoption of GLP-1 drugs, their potential economic impact and the company’s outlook for medicines, including Wegovy.

Mike Doustdar, chief executive officer of Novo Nordisk, speaking during an interview. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg / Getty Images)

“We are clearly at early innings,” Doustdar said, pointing to the large population living with obesity and relatively limited use of GLP-1 medications. He said more than 100 million people in the U.S. are suffering from obesity, while “somewhere around 10, 15% in a good day” have used a GLP-1.

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“There is a long runway still,” he said.

Beyond weight loss, Doustdar said wider use of the drugs could eventually help Americans save on healthcare costs while bringing broader economic benefits.

“I do think as we get there, not only you see the health benefits of these drugs, you also see the economical benefit of these drugs,” he said.

Doustdar pointed to medication use as one area where a healthier, smaller population could reduce consumption. He used insulin, another product sold by Novo Nordisk, as an example of how dosage can vary with body size.

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“I sell insulin, and I know that a person who is larger does more insulin dose than someone who’s smaller,” he said.

He also pointed to the potential value of healthier people returning to work and becoming more productive, arguing that the benefits could extend beyond the number on a scale.

“Then, of course, comes on top of that, the economical value that comes from people getting back to work healthier,” Doustdar said. “People are more productive.”

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The stock traded between $216.11 and $235.96 after opening at $226, compared with its previous close of $193.23.

Nebius reported its results a day after its larger rival CoreWeave raised its annual forecasts, fuelling a broader rally in AI infrastructure stocks as both companies signalled that demand for computing capacity continued to outpace supply.

Nebius reported a sixfold surge in revenue from its core AI cloud business, which took overall sales to $582.3 million in the June ended quarter, beating analysts’ estimates of $572.75 million, according to LSEG data.

Nebius is turning rising demand into “contracted, profitable growth,” CEO Arkady Volozh told Reuters.

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The Nvidia-powered AI cloud provider secured four deals averaging over $1 billion each, nearly quadrupling its total contract value, while contracts from new customers surged more than ninefold.
Asked about growing competition from newcomers such as xAI, Volozh told Reuters that demand for AI computing continued to far outstrip supply, adding that Nebius could sell its entire planned capacity for 2027 at current terms.Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said that demand for AI cloud capacity remained strong despite increasing competition. However, he said the key question was whether that demand would prove diversified and sustainable beyond the AI industry.

Nebius spent about $5.7 billion during the quarter, above analysts’ estimate of $4.7 billion, as it continued to invest heavily in GPUs and data-centre expansion. The company said AI cloud contracts signed during the period, with annual values exceeding $20 million per megawatt, were expected to come online late in the fourth quarter.

Nebius raised its contracted power target for 2026 to 5 gigawatts from more than 4 GW and plans to add over 1 GW of capacity annually from 2027—enough to power about 750,000 US homes. It expects more than $9 billion in customer prepayments this year and has secured over $40 billion in customer commitments.

(Disclaimer: This article is based on inputs from agencies. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

Customers of Metronet, the fiber-optic internet provider serving communities across 16 states, reported problems accessing their internet service Wednesday morning, according to outage-tracking service Downdetector, in what appeared to be a developing disruption affecting the company’s network.

Downdetector said user reports indicating problems with Metronet began climbing at 8:23 a.m. Eastern time. The tracking service posted about the rising number of reports on its official account on the social platform X, asking affected users to describe how the outage was impacting them and tagging the post with the hashtag “MetronetDown.”

Separate outage-monitoring service StatusGator later reported detecting a likely Metronet disruption as of 12:33 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, logging 89 user-submitted reports of problems over the preceding 24-hour window. StatusGator noted that, based on its analysis of issue reports, page visits and signal strength data, Metronet appeared to be experiencing or to have recently experienced an outage, even though the company had not officially acknowledged any service disruption as of the time of that assessment.

Not every outage-tracking service showed the same picture, however. Separate monitoring tools, including ISPDown.com and Outage.report, indicated at various points Wednesday that Metronet appeared to be “operating normally,” with one service reporting zero outages logged in the preceding 24 hours. That discrepancy between different third-party tracking tools underscored the difficulty of pinning down the precise scope and timeline of an internet service disruption using crowdsourced and automated monitoring systems alone, particularly for an outage that may affect some geographic areas or customer segments more heavily than others.

As of Wednesday, Metronet had not issued a detailed public statement addressing the scope, cause or expected resolution timeline for the reported outage. The company’s own website includes a dedicated outage information page directing customers experiencing service disruptions to first check for alerts through the myMetronet customer portal, confirm their account is current on payments, verify that their power and equipment connections are functioning properly, and power-cycle their modem or router by unplugging it for at least 10 seconds before restoring power. Metronet has said that if those basic troubleshooting steps do not resolve a customer’s issue, the disruption may be part of a broader network outage, and has directed affected customers to contact its technical support team for further assistance.

Metronet describes itself as a 100% fiber-optic internet provider delivering symmetrical, multi-gigabit internet speeds to homes and businesses, with particularly strong coverage across Indiana, Illinois and Florida, among the 16 states where the company operates. The company markets residential and business internet plans reaching speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second, along with television service featuring cloud DVR and access to streaming platforms including Netflix and YouTube TV, positioning itself as a fiber-focused alternative to larger, more established internet providers in the mid-sized markets it serves.

Wednesday’s reported disruption would not be the first outage to affect Metronet’s network. According to data compiled by StatusGator, the company has experienced several previous service disruptions over the past two months, including outages detected on July 15, June 23, June 16 and June 13, ranging in duration from roughly 18 minutes to just over two hours. StatusGator noted that none of those earlier incidents were ever officially acknowledged by Metronet, mirroring the pattern seen with Wednesday’s reported disruption.

Given the nature of fiber-optic internet service, outages affecting Metronet’s network can leave customers without home internet access entirely, disrupting everything from remote work and video streaming to smart home devices and, for some customers, television and phone service bundled through the same connection. Because Metronet also offers business-tier internet plans, service disruptions can carry a meaningful economic impact for small and mid-sized businesses that rely on the company’s fiber connections for day-to-day operations, a factor the company has acknowledged on its own outage information pages by offering separate business-specific outage resources.

Customers experiencing problems with their Metronet service were, consistent with the company’s own published guidance, generally advised to first check the myMetronet customer portal for any posted service alerts before assuming a broader network-wide issue was responsible for their disruption. Metronet has said it aims to provide customers with timely updates during confirmed outages through both email and text notifications, which customers can opt into through their online account settings.

This remains a developing situation, and additional details regarding the precise scope, underlying cause and expected resolution timeline of Wednesday’s reported Metronet outage were not immediately available. The company had not issued an official public acknowledgment of the disruption as of Wednesday afternoon, leaving affected customers largely reliant on third-party outage trackers and the company’s standard troubleshooting guidance to determine whether their service issues were part of a broader, network-wide problem.

Brazil’s data protection authority (ANPD) has ordered Discord to suspend its livestreaming feature after a teenage girl was allegedly encouraged to take her own life in a broadcast on the platform.

The messaging service allows people to create and join groups based on their interests, with users able to enter voice or video calls in real time through Discord’s “Go Live” feature.

The investigation by the ANPD began on 7 August after the death of a 13-year-old girl, who was reportedly pressured to end her life by others in the Discord server – or group – she was in.

Discord told the BBC it was “thoughtfully reviewing” the ANPD’s order and is “committed to user safety”.

“Groups or individuals who promote or encourage violence have no place on Discord,” a spokesperson said.

“We swiftly investigated and shut down the private, invite-only server involved shortly after its creation and continue to cooperate with law enforcement in its investigation.”

According to Reuters, external, the ANPD said it found Discord lacks ‌real-time ⁠access to livestream content, which prevents automated violation detection.

The site, which can be accessed on desktop or as a mobile app, has over 200 million monthly active users, and is popular with gamers.

Discord’s spokesperson said in its investigation, evidence was found that the criminal activity “was coordinated on other platforms before the Discord server was created” as well as continuing “after the individuals involved were banned from Discord”.

Five teenagers have reportedly been arrested in connection to the teenage girl’s death.

Discord now has three days to comply with the suspension and can appeal the decision within 10 business days.

The platform faces potential fines of ​up to 50m reais ($9.67m) per ⁠violation.

The ANPD said the suspension will remain in place until Discord proves it has implemented “adequate protective measures for minors”, which may include age verification checks.

In August 2024, the social media platform X was banned in Brazil after failing to pay existing fines and to meet a deadline set by a Supreme Court judge to name a new legal representative in the country.

It was unbanned by the Supreme Court in October 2024 after it complied with court orders by paying fines totalling 28m reais ($5.1m; £3.8m) and agreed to appoint a local representative, as required by Brazilian law.

Andy Burnham has been warned that the UK economy could barely grow next year if disruption in the Strait of Hormuz continues until the end of 2026.

Treasury sources have confirmed that internal modelling presented to the new prime minister and chancellor suggests UK GDP growth could be as low as 0.3% in 2027, as first reported by Bloomberg.

Government officials say they routinely plan for all possible scenarios.

The UK economy saw a strong start to the year, but growth then faltered with the conflict in the Middle East affecting some businesses. The Iran war has pushed up oil and fuel prices, and also disrupted supply chains.

On Thursday, official figures will show how much the economy grew between April and June of this year.

Economists are expecting growth of 0.4% for the three months.

Burnham and Chancellor John Healey were presented with a reasonable worst-case scenario of the Strait of Hormuz remaining effectively closed for the next five months, and no permanent US-Iran peace deal until the new year.

The Treasury modelling for that scenario was that the UK economy would grow by 0.9% over 2026 – slightly under the 1.1% forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in March.

The prospect was much dimmer for next year, with just 0.3% growth projected – much lower than the OBR’s 1.6% forecast for 2027.

Under the modelling, inflation would peak at 4.3% in the first three months of next year. It currently stands at 2.6%, just above the Bank of England’s 2% target.

The prime minister and chancellor will face pressure to use the upcoming Budget on 28 October to ease the financial burden on households and businesses.

Since taking office three weeks ago, Burnham has announced policies including the removal of VAT from domestic electricity bills and bringing forward an already planned end to “subscription traps”.

But this week he told the BBC’s Wake up to Money the announcements, aimed at tackling the cost of living, are not enough on their own, hinting at further support.

He has asked Healey to look at what more the government can do on the cost of living in the Budget, with the chancellor saying it will be his “main focus”.

But Healey has said he will oversee “strong fiscal discipline” – which will limit how much the government has to spend.

Burnham has said his government will stick to the party’s 2024 manifesto pledges not to increase people’s income tax, VAT or National Insurance contributions.

He also promised to follow the fiscal rules imposed by former Chancellor Rachel Reeves, which include a pledge to balance day-to-day spending with tax revenues by the end of the decade.