How Novo Nordisk’s new Wegovy pill is transforming the weight-loss drug market

Less than a month after it came to market, Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill is already reshaping the obesity drug market.

Since the drug launched on January 5, telehealth companies have reported strong demand from patients seeking Novo’s Wegovy pill — the first oral GLP-1 approved for weight loss. Many of those people are first-time GLP-1 users, while others are switching from weekly injectables. 

“Tens of millions of people were waiting on the sidelines for this improvement in form factor,” Zachariah Reitano, the CEO of Ro, said in an interview. The telehealth company has integrated with both Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly’s direct-to-consumer pharmacies. 

Companies like Ro have become central to marketing and distributing weight-loss drugs, which are increasingly sold through consumer-facing platforms rather than traditional pharmacies. In the first three weeks of the launch, the pill hit over 44,000 cumulative prescriptions in the US, according to IQVIA data cited by Deutsche Bank analysts, far ahead of early injectable launches. 

The pill is more inviting to patients who are squeamish or see injectables as “too serious and too significant of a next step,” Reitano said. For others, a weekly injection is simpler than a daily pill that has to be taken on an empty stomach followed by a 30-minute fast. 

Early data from Ro shows a higher proportion of men opting for the pill compared to injectables. Separately, Deutsche Bank analysts said in a Friday note that so far broader uptake is concentrated among working-age patients. 

Pills are generally cheaper to store and manufacture than refrigerated, prefilled injectable pens, meaning they can be sold at a lower price. The cash-pay price for a monthly supply of the Wegovy pill is $149 for a starting dose, compared to $199 and $299 for starting doses of injectable Wegovy or Lilly’s Zepbound, respectively. 

Myra Ahmad, CEO of obesity telehealth company Mochi, said she expects the Wegovy pill to be lower-margin than higher-priced injectables. She said companies may view the pills as an easier way to get someone started with the drugs, but thinks they will try to shepherd users toward the injectables over time. “I expect a lot of their next earnings calls to focus on oral semaglutide patients transitioning to injectables,” she said. 

The early data has been a boost for Novo, which was early to the GLP-1 market but has lost ground to Lilly. But soon it will have competition from Lilly’s weight-loss pill orforglipron, which is expected to come to market in April. That pill can be taken any time of day with or without food or water, making it potentially easier for patients to adhere to than the Wegovy pill. Lilly has said its pill would also be priced at $149 for a starting dose. 

Several other drugmakers, including Amgenand Pfizer, are working on GLP-1 pills and injectables expected to come to market over the next few years. Reitano said he expects that over the next two years, patients will bounce around among treatments as more options emerge.

“Some products are better for some people — priced differently, different efficacy, different form factor,” Reitano said. 

“A consumer business” 

Novo and Lilly have partnered with telehealth companies like Ro, LifeMD, and WeightWatchers as well as retail giants like Costco, Amazon, and Walmart to distribute their drugs for cash-pay patients. Employers are increasingly dropping coverage of GLP-1s and directing their workers to the cash-pay options.

Michael Botta, president and cofounder of Sesame, a telehealth platform that also partners with Novo, said that over the past year the company’s patient population on GLP-1s has gone from about 70% to 80% insurance-covered to about 70% cash-pay. 

“As prices have come down, and as the cash-pay lanes have become more well worn and more understood, patients are viewing this more like a consumer industry,” Botta said. 

When Wegovy and Zepbound, Novo and Lilly’s respective weight-loss shots, initially launched, they were treated like any other medication: primarily through insurance with list prices over $1,000 for a monthly supply. That, paired with manufacturer shortages, led to the rise of compounding pharmacies making copycat versions of the drugs starting in 2024 that sold for as little as $200 a month. 

Those alternative formulations were much cheaper, often sold through consumer-native telehealth platforms more skilled at social media advertising and with less regulatory burdens than FDA-approved drugs. Even as the shortages have been resolved, many companies, including Hims & Hers and Mochi, have continued to sell cheaper versions of Lilly and Novo’s drugs that they say are “personalized” for patients. 

Lilly launched a cash-pay direct-to-consumer pharmacy in August 2024, followed by Novo in March 2025. Since then, prices for the brand-name drugs have dropped to ranges similar to compounded versions. 

In January, as the Wegovy pill launched during the annual post-New Year’s weight-loss season, Ro and WeightWatchers — both partners of Novo Nordisk — saw an increase in web traffic.

Botta said that’s eroded the economics of compounding. “I think of the compounding GLP-1 craze as being sort of a moment in time,” he said. 

While Hims, the largest of its peers, continues to sell compounded weight-loss drugs, the tone has shifted. Last year, that was the focus of its Super Bowl commercial, while this year the focus is on a broader suite of treatments. 

Then the drugmakers partnered with telehealth companies that spend big on advertising. Though some of those telehealth companies previously sold copies of Novo and Lilly’s drugs, the drugmakers appear to require that their partners don’t market compounded versions of their drugs. Novo’s deal with Hims and Lilly’s deal with Noom dissolved for that reason. 

Nearly all ads for the Wegovy pill on Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram are from telehealth companies, according to Meta’s ad library. Many of the telehealth companies advertising it don’t even have a formal partnership with Novo. 

Images of Serena Williams injecting herself with a prefilled (though unbranded) GLP-1 pen have lined New York City subway cars and Instagram feeds since the partnership began in August, just before the US Open began. Williams’ husband, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, is an investor and board member at Ro. 

On Wednesday, Ro unveiled a 30-second Super Bowl ad featuring Williams, which mentions that a FDA-approved GLP-1 pill is now available, though she doesn’t say the brand name.

For Novo, “mastering” the direct-to-consumer channels is “something high on our agenda,” CEO Mike Doustdar said at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco on January 16. 

“We need to meet the patients where they are,” he said. “We have seen that especially within the field of obesity, this acts a lot more as a consumer business than a traditional medication.”