Eli Lilly has long been gearing up for the launch of orforglipron, announcing as early as February 2024 that it was ramping up manufacturing investments for the weight-loss pill.
With a potential approval coming in the next few months, Eli Lilly has amassed $1.5 billion worth of orforglipron stock to ensure a strong launch to the product.
This figure reflects Lilly’s orforglipron inventory as of Dec. 31, 2025, according to a securities filing on Thursday. It is unclear whether the pharma has further expanded its stockpile since then. The weight loss pill is currently under FDA review with a decision not expected until April. Still, “when we believe that future commercialization is probable,” Lilly said in its filing, it prepares a pre-launch inventory before regulatory approval.
The pharma has been building out its commercial capacity for orforglipron for some time now. As early as February 2024, Lilly announced that it had started ramping up manufacturing investments in preparation for orforglipron, and to make sure that its production capacity would be able to keep up with expected demand once the product launched. At the time, orforglipron had just begun Phase 3 trials.
“We do plan to build ahead of Phase 3 at risk,” CEO David Ricks said during the company’s 2023 fourth quarter earnings call. “We see that as a wise investment … and if we’re wrong, okay, we’ll have to eat that in the end.” In its 2024 annual report, filed with the SEC in February 2025, the company revealed that it had amassed $548.1 million worth of orforglipron stocks.
Lilly continued to expand its manufacturing operations in the U.S., driven in large part by tariff threats from President Donald Trump, but also with the goal of boosting its orforglipron supply chain. An Alabama investment made by Lilly, unveiled in December 2025, for instance, will focus its operations on small-molecule and peptide drugs, including orforglipron.
Meanwhile, fellow obesity leader Novo Nordisk is looking to take the success of its oral Wegovy worldwide. The weight loss pill was approved late last year and, in just a few days after its formal launch last month, already reached more than 3,000 patients, according to health analytics firm IQVIA.
Now, the Danish giant is looking to expand one of its facilities in Ireland to boost its international supply of oral Wegovy, CEO Maziar Mike Doustdar told Bloomberg News on Thursday. Doustdar also updated IQVIA’s figures, claiming that more than 240,000 Americans were already taking the pill.
Doustdar did not specify how much money the company plans to pump into Ireland, nor did he say which countries Novo plans to expand to first.
