Friday Five: Lilly Expands Zepbound’s DTC Reach, NVIDIA Powers Drug Discovery at Lilly and Verily, and OpenAI Advances Pharma AI Initiatives

Lilly has rapidly grown Zepbound's direct-to-consumer (DTC) reach, with 35% of new Zepbound prescriptions in Q2 2025 fulfilled through LillyDirect self-pay, further strengthened by a new partnership enabling retail pick-up at over 4,600 Walmart pharmacies across the U.S.1 2 3 7.

This collaboration with Walmart marks the first time Zepbound single-dose vials can be accessed at a retail pharmacy via self-pay DTC pricing, offering more than 50% discounts versus list prices of other GLP-1 medicines and starting at $349 per month for the lowest dose1 3 7.

NVIDIA has partnered with Lilly and Verily to power large-scale, AI-driven drug discovery. Lilly’s new AI factory, built on 1,016 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs and the DGX SuperPOD, is the largest AI factory in pharma and aims to accelerate computational genomics, molecular design, and personalized medicine4 6 8 9 10.

Lilly's AI factory uses the TuneLab platform, enabling biotech partners to access Lilly and NVIDIA Clara healthcare models via federated learning—allowing model improvement while maintaining partner data privacy4 6.

OpenAI advances in pharma include efforts to deliver generative AI-driven drug discovery and development solutions, considered by analysts as a 'double whammy' for transforming pharmaceutical R&D with advanced foundation models and automating drug design steps2.

Lilly’s continued investments in AI and strategic partnerships reinforce its reputation as the most AI-ready pharma company, as cited by CB Insights, and serve to democratize access to advanced drug discovery models across the life sciences sector4 6 8.