GLP-1s Took Eli Lilly To $1 Trillion. CEO Dave Ricks Is Betting Billions He Can Do It Again

0:00Dave Ricks: This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed Sponsored Jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It's officially the holiday season, and Abercrombie's new collection has outfits for everything on your calendar. It's the busiest time of year, and between shopping and party invites, I don't have time to plan every look.

0:41But Abercrombie's always got me covered. Their sweaters are the perfect easy layer for low-key plans, and on a nice night out, I'm reaching for their classic trousers. Fill your closet with the pieces you'll need all season long. Have a very Abercrombie holiday. Shop in the app, online, and in stores. Today on Forbes, GLP-1s took Eli Lilly to$1 trillion. CEO Dave Ricks is betting billions he can do it again. Dave Ricks, the CEO of the largest, most successful drugmaker on the planet, Eli Lilly, spends a lot of time thinking about risk. Eli Lilly's weight loss and diabetes drugs have become wildly successful beyond anyone's imagination.

1:28Its latest 12-month revenue through June 30th surged 50 % to$79.7 billion, with ZepBound, for weight loss, and Monjaro, for diabetes, accounting for 62 % of the total. In November 2025, its market cap crossed the$1 trillion mark, making it the first pharma company to do so. Its market cap is currently hovering around$1.1 trillion. dollars. Lilly has more weight loss game changers coming. A pill called Foundayo gained FDA approval in April. Lilly plans to submit a next-gen experimental drug, Retta Trutide, to the FDA in the first quarter of 2027. People are so excited about it, Retta as it's called online, that they're buying substances claiming to be the drug on the black market.

2:23But the clock is ticking. All drugs have a shelf life because of how pharma patents work. Likely at some point in the 2030s, the exploding market for its weight loss drugs will collapse as generics flood in. Now, the trillion-dollar question for Lilly is how to build, or buy, a pipeline of drugs that can sustain its tremendous success. CEO Ricks, who is 59 years old and whose personal stake in Lilly is worth nearly$700 million, has been thinking about how to prepare for this moment since before he took the helm in 2017. Forbes is interviewing Ricks on the executive floor at Lilly's Indianapolis headquarters, where formal paintings of the company's 10 previous CEOs hang on the walls.

3:10Ricks tells Forbes, quote,

3:23Instead, Rix is in spending mode. So far this year, Lilly has struck 31 deals, including 14 acquisitions and 17 licensing agreements, shelling out a total of$18 billion as it cranks up its pipeline. That's more than quadruple the$4 billion it spent on 39 deals during all of last year. Those numbers don't include the earnouts and milestones typical of pharma deals that haven't yet been met. The company has invested not just in mainstays such as oncology and neurology, but also in more experimental areas like psychedelics and sleep. Meanwhile, it's increased its internal R &D spending, Ricks' first priority, to$13.3 billion in 2025 from$11 billion in 2024.

4:15In the first half of this year, it spent$7.3 billion, 21 % above the same period last year. Ricks says, quote,

4:37There's no total budget he's looking to hit. Instead, the company figures out what it will cost to pursue the projects it wants. Sitting across the conference room table, Ricks is both charming and intense. While leading Lilly for nearly a decade, he successfully navigated the politics of the pharmaceutical business, cutting deals with President Trump to slash prices and build out U.S. manufacturing. Trump has praised him as, quote, an unbelievable executive, an unbelievable guy. Now Ricks is looking to replicate some of the GLP-1 playbook. Weight loss meds are increasingly showing additional health benefits, such as improved cardiovascular health.

5:18Some of Lilly's forward-looking efforts are similarly preventive. It's investing in medicines for sleep disorders, which scientists increasingly believe profoundly affect overall health. In the labs, it's working on new ways to treat Alzheimer's earlier, and on a therapy that could permanently turn off a gene in the liver to lower so-called bad cholesterol. Rick says, quote, Because of our time horizon and the amount of resources we have to put to work, we have a bit of a strategic advantage over anyone else. That gives Lilly the ability to invest in drugs that are earlier in their clinical development.

5:56Such treatments, while risky, have the potential for more profound breakthroughs and a bigger payoff. It also lets Lilly bet big on AI for drug development, including a$1 billion partnership with NVIDIA on a new AI innovation lab. Rick said earlier this year he didn't expect it would pay off until the 2030s. For full coverage, check out Amy Feldman's piece on Forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

6:42It's officially the holiday season, and Abercrombie's new collection has outfits for everything on your calendar. It's the busiest time of year, and between shopping and party invites, I don't have time to plan every look. But Abercrombie's always got me covered. Their sweaters are the perfect easy layer for low-key plans, and on a nice night out, I'm reaching for their classic trousers. Fill your closet with the pieces you'll need all season long. Have a very Abercrombie holiday. Shop in the app, online, and in stores.