Healthcare fortunes come from drug makers, vaccine producers, hospitals and medical devices. Eli Lilly, maker of the weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound, has become one of the most valuable companies in the world, worth about $1.26 trillion in November 2026 1. India’s richest healthcare entrepreneurs include Cyrus Poonawalla of the Serum Institutethe world’s largest vaccine maker by doses, and Dilip Shanghvi of Sun Pharma.
The biggest healthcare companies
| Company | Country | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Eli Lilly | United States | Mounjaro and Zepbound weight-loss and diabetes drugs |
| Novo Nordisk | Denmark | Ozempic and Wegovy |
| Johnson & Johnson | United States | Medicines and medical devices |
| Serum Institute of India | India | Largest vaccine maker by doses; private, owned by the Poonawalla family |
| Sun Pharma | India | India’s largest drug maker; specialty and generic medicines |
How healthcare fortunes are made
Most large healthcare fortunes come from owning a drug company, a hospital chain or a medical-device maker. A single successful medicine can earn tens of billions of dollars a year while its patent lasts, which is why drug makers spend heavily on research. Generic-drug makers, common in India, earn smaller margins by copying medicines once patents expire.
The weight-loss boom
A class of drugs called GLP-1 agonists, first developed for diabetes, turned out to cause large weight loss. Demand for Lilly’s and Novo Nordisk’s versions has been so strong that Lilly became the first drug maker worth more than $1 trillion 1.
Tech billionaires in healthcare
Several technology founders invest in health. Elon Musk co-founded Neuralink, which implants brain-computer interfaces. Sergey Brin has given hundreds of millions of dollars to Parkinson’s disease research, and Alphabet owns the life-sciences companies Verily and Calico.
Trends to watch
- Drug prices: US moves to cut drug prices could reduce profits.
- AI in drug discovery: machine learning is being used to design new medicines faster.
- Patent cliffs: blockbuster drugs losing protection open the market to generic makers.
