Eli Lilly’s weight-loss franchise—including the tirzepatide products Mounjaro and Zepbound, and the weight-loss pill Foundayo—will account for nearly half of the total sales of the top 10 drugs in 2032.
Prescription drug sales will rise to a staggering $2 trillion worldwide in 2032—and Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide brands Mounjaro and Zepbound will lead the pack with more than $70 billion in sales, according to Evaluate’s World Preview forecast. This would make the drugs the best-selling of all time, surpassing Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccines.
Foundayo, Lilly’s third weight-loss juggernaut-to-be, will also exceed $25 billion in 2032 sales, according to Evaluate’s projection. Together, these three Lilly drugs will account for almost half of the total 2032 sales of the 10 biggest drugs that year.
Missing from the prediction is Novo Nordisk, which markets the GLP-1 therapy semaglutide. Lilly and Novo are locked in a battle for market supremacy. Despite enjoying a years-long headstart in the market, the Danish giant trails its Indiana competitor. The semaglutide brands Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus last year brought in a cumulative $36.19 billion, while the tirzepatide products Mounjaro and Zepbound made a total of $36.51 billion.
The obesity race has since moved forward to the oral phase—and here Novo appears to be in the lead. The pharma’s oral formulation for Wegovy won FDA approval late last year and has since enjoyed a strong launch, reaching 1 million patients in its first 16 weeks on pharmacy shelves. Lilly’s challenger, the closely watched pill Foundayo, was approved in April and has had a slower start.
Still, reading the tea leaves, Evaluate seems to have picked its horse.
“Lilly out-played one-time obesity/diabetes leader Novo Nordisk,” the intelligence firm wrote in its report, writing that Ozempic and Wegovy will “slip just outside the 2032 top ten best-sellers.” Both tirzepatide products, in contrast, land squarely in the top five, with Mounjaro hitting just over $45 billion. Evaluate called tirzepatide the “biggest drug ever.”
While the firm expects Novo to fall further behind, Evaluate nevertheless forecasts total semaglutide sales—buffed by the next-generation injectable CagriSema, currently under FDA review with a decision expected later this year—to exceed $25 billion in 2032.
Evaluate also sees the obesity field continuing to dominate R&D, with the top five pipeline candidates falling in that indication or oncology. Lilly’s triple-G agonist retatrutide, which activates the GLP-1, GIP and glucagon receptors, has a valuation of more than $20 billion, according to the report.
The pharma has a broad Phase 3 program for retatrutide, assessing the candidate in various indications such as obstructive sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, chronic low back pain and liver diseases.
The only molecule surpassing retatrutide on Elevate’s R&D leaderboard is Summit Therapeutics and Akeso Pharma’s ivonescimab, a PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibody being proposed for non-small cell lung cancer. The drug, which is under FDA review with a target action date of Nov. 14, has a valuation of over $25 billion.
