Eli Lilly hits $1 trillion market cap, first health-care firm ever, on surging demand for Zepbound, Mounjaro

Zepbound and Mounjaro have turned the 148-year-old drugmaker into a market-moving giant as investors bet on the $150-billion obesity drug boom.

Eli Lilly briefly crossed a $1 trillion market valuation on Friday, becoming the first health-care company in history to join a club long dominated by Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia. The stock later pulled back, trading around $1,048 a share, but the milestone was enough to reshape Wall Street’s leaderboard.

It’s Zepbound and Mounjaro driving the rocket ship

Shares of the Indianapolis-based firm are up more than 36 percent this year, fuelled by soaring global demand for Zepbound, its obesity treatment, and Mounjaro, its diabetes drug, both based on tirzepatide.

Analysts cited by CNBC expect the weight-loss drug market to top $150 billion by the early 2030s, with Lilly positioned as one of its biggest winners.

A new phase of the weight-loss drug arms race

Unlike Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide-based drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, Lilly’s tirzepatide targets two gut hormones, GLP-1 and GIP, which help suppress appetite and improve how the body handles sugar and fat.

That biochemical difference has quietly become a valuation engine.

According to a CNBC report, Mounjaro crossed 'blockbuster' status in its first full year, generating over $1 billion in annual sales after its 2022 approval, and Zepbound has since expanded the drug’s reach from diabetes care into obesity and weight-loss demand.

This company isn’t new, but the market it unlocked is

Founded in 1876, Eli Lilly introduced the world’s first commercial insulin a century ago and went on to produce major medical mainstays including Prozac and one of the earliest polio vaccines. It listed on the NYSE in 1952.

For most of its history, Lilly was a traditional pharma leader.