Over the past decade, Eli Lilly has bought out more biotechs than any of the other top 12 pharmas by revenue—with 10 of those acquisitions arriving just this year.
No one has signed more M&A deals than Eli Lilly this year, with $25.27 billion spent across 10 transactions. That total represents more than half of the $46.38 billion that the top 12 pharmas by revenue have spent in 2026 so far and clearly launches the obesity juggernaut into a whole new stratosphere in the pharma world.
In the past decade, Lilly has inked 30 buyouts. Second in line among the top 10 pharmas is Novartis with 26, with the list falling more steeply from there.
Deals signed does not have any correlation to money spent, however. Lilly’s 10-year deal history amounts to $54 billion, while Bristol Myers Squibb’s 11 deals over the same time period total $146.7 billion. Of course, one of those deals was Celgene, which S&P Capital IQ valued at $99.5 billion, making it the largest pharma deal in the past decade.
The wide range speaks to Lilly’s preference for smaller deals, which was on display last month when the company bought three vaccine biotechs on the same day for $3.8 billion combined.
Up until Monday, Lilly had the largest deal of the year with the $8.14 billion acquisition of Centessa Pharmaceuticals from March. But GSK stole the crown by offering to buy Nuvalent for $10.6 billion. The largest transaction of the year so far falls slightly outside the typical pharma space in generics, with Sun Pharma buying women’s health focused Organon for $11.75 billion.
Beyond M&A, Lilly has also inked 11 major licensing deals, including a double header on June 2 with South Korea’s Haisco and China’s Hanmi. While the partners in the former did not reveal the disease area, Lilly will work with Hanmi on a GLP-2 for short bowel disease.
