American pharmaceutical company. Its GLP-1 agonist Mounjaro was launched in 2022 for diabetes, followed by Zepbound, a version aimed specifically at weight loss, approved in America in November 2023—more than two years after Novo Nordisk's rival drug Wegovy. Zepbound targets both the GLP-1 and GIP hormones; the dual action produces greater weight loss than Wegovy. Mounjaro and Zepbound fell doctors and patients into their camp the moment they launched, at the expense of Novo's earlier offerings. In a head-to-head trial, patients on Zepbound lost 20% of their body weight, compared with 14% for Wegovy. A third of Zepbound users shed at least 25%, twice the share for Wegovy. In its first year Zepbound yielded $4.9bn in revenue.
The company resolved its supply issues by October 2024, earlier than Novo Nordisk managed with Wegovy. Lilly bypassed intermediaries and went straight to patients, offering low-dose Zepbound vials online for $399—well below the wholesale list price of about $1,100. It also partnered with telehealth providers, including Hims & Hers, to broaden its reach. Zepbound's list price is about $1,000 a month, compared with $1,350 for Wegovy. In November 2025 both Lilly and Novo Nordisk struck deals with the Trump administration to provide Medicare with discounted access to their obesity drugs, at roughly a third less than commercial-insurer prices; in return, Medicare agreed to cover the treatments for the first time.
Patrik Jonsson heads Lilly's weight-loss division. The company's pipeline includes orforglipron, an oral weight-loss pill that is cheaper to manufacture than Novo's rival pill and can be taken without fasting. Lilly has "millions of tablets" available ahead of its expected approval in 2026. Analysts reckon orforglipron will provide $16bn in annual sales by 2030. On April 1st 2026 the FDA approved a new Lilly weight-loss pill only 50 days after filing, having been granted a priority voucher. The unusually fast approval followed Lilly's February 2025 pledge to invest $27bn in American manufacturing and a November 2025 agreement to lower prices for its weight-loss medicines in the country.
In February 2025 Lilly pledged to invest $27bn in production in America, though a factory takes at least three to four years to build. Over the past four years Lilly has spent $21bn on capital expenditure, equivalent to around 11% of sales—twice Roche's share and two and a half times Pfizer's. David Ricks is chief executive. Analysts expect Lilly to hold 47% of a $90bn-plus weight-loss drug market by 2030, to Novo Nordisk's 40%.
Lilly's pipeline also includes retatrutide, an experimental drug with higher kilo-shedding potential than current offerings.
In March 2025 Lilly began selling Mounjaro in India at about $180 a month—a quarter of the American price. By September it was the country's second-bestselling branded medicine. Mounjaro and Wegovy were approved by Chinese regulators in 2024, but with supplies tight Lilly focused first on rich markets, particularly America. Lilly also has a partnership with Innovent, a Chinese biotech firm, which won approval in June 2025 for mazdutide, a weight-loss drug about as effective as Lilly's own version.
Lilly has a contract with Isomorphic Labs, a London-based Alphabet spin-out, to test candidate drug molecules' interactions with target proteins using AI protein-design tools. In October 2025 Lilly teamed up with Nvidia to build the pharma industry's most powerful supercomputer.
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.