Alphabet CFO Anat Ashkenazi pivots from GLP-1 craze to generative AI | Wilnesh News

alphabetical Outgoing financial chief Ruth Porat has spent the past year and a half trying to help her dot-com company ride the wave of generative artificial intelligence. The person newly named as her successor is mired in a very different phenomenon: anti-obesity drugs.

Alphabet announced Wednesday Eli Lilly and Company Finance Minister Anat Ashkenazi will become the new finance chief after a nearly year-long search. During that time, Ashkenazy was responsible for managing the books of the world’s most valuable drugmaker, which had such high demand for weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound that it struggled to maintain supply.

“Thousands of people filled prescriptions for Mounjaro and Zepbound, but we understand the frustration of those who face delays in getting their prescriptions filled or who are unable to obtain their medications,” Ashkenazi said on Eli Lilly’s first-quarter earnings call in April.

The two drugs are part of a class of treatments called GLP-1, which has grown rapidly over the past few years due to its effectiveness in helping people lose weight. These drugs can also treat diabetes by suppressing a person’s appetite by mimicking hormones produced in the gut. About one in eight adults in the United States has used GLP-1, according to one study Last published survey Month comes from health policy research organization KFF.

Eli Lilly’s stock price has soared 90% in the past year and is trading at an all-time high. The company reported better-than-expected results in April and raised its full-year guidance.

“In her last three years as Eli Lilly’s chief financial officer, we have experienced tremendous growth and made significant contributions to helping us serve more patients,” Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks said in a statement. Providing medicines lays the foundation. Press release Wednesday.

Ashkenazi, a 23-year veteran of Eli Lilly, will head to the Bay Area from the drugmaker’s headquarters in Indiana at the end of July, also at a critical time for Google. As Google prioritizes investing in artificial intelligence to keep up with a rapidly evolving market, the finance department has been grappling with a restructuring that affects the entire company.

Porat will take on a new role as president and chief investment officer of Alphabet, nine years after joining the company. Morgan Stanley. Both she and Ashkenazi will report to Chief Executive Sundar Pichai.

Alphabet did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for an interview with Ashkenazi.

Ashkenazi, 51, began her career in Israel’s financial services industry. When she joined Eli Lilly in 2001, she did so through the company’s new venture capital arm, which was co-founded by her then-spouse Ron Laufer.

On the way to becoming chief financial officer in 2021, Ashkenazy served as finance director for global divisions, including manufacturing and research and development, and as chief strategy officer. She took over the finance department, succeeding then-CFO John Smiley. Resigned After being accused of having an inappropriate relationship with an employee and having millions of dollars in bonuses and equity awards forfeited.

After her promotion, Ashkenazi noticed a depressing data point: She was the only female CFO in the biopharmaceutical industry. She told CNBC in 2022 that her path was relatively easy, having moved to the United States from Israel more than two decades ago and coming from a very different culture where gender inequality was no longer an issue. She said it wasn’t something she considered.

“I don’t care,” Ashkenazy said. “But not everyone has that mentality, especially in the Midwest.”

Ashkenazy told the CFO Thought Leadership Podcast last year that she spent five years working in various parts of the organization, looking at the business from a different perspective.

“This experience developed my skills in a more holistic way,” she said.

Ashkenazy holds a master’s degree in business administration from Tel Aviv University and a bachelor’s degree in economics and business administration from Hebrew University, according to public documents.

Founded in 1876, Eli Lilly has long been one of the major pharmaceutical companies in the United States. The company is best known for launching antidepressant drugs Prozac in the 1980s and Cymbalta about 20 years later.

But the past few years have marked a historic period of growth for Eli Lilly and Company, as The explosive popularity of GLP-1. Diabetes drug Mounjaro sales top $5 billion first full year Eli Lilly’s revenue grew 20% last year to $34 billion, the fastest growth since 1990, according to FactSet.

That success, along with the potential of highly anticipated drugs like Alzheimer’s treatment donanezumab, has boosted Eli Lilly’s market value to nearly $800 billion, making it the largest pharmaceutical company by market value.

Many patients are struggling to find medications as demand for their weight loss and diabetes treatments exceeds supply. Ashkenazi said on an earnings call in February that the company had doubled its incretin drug production capacity by the end of 2023 with the help of a new facility in North Carolina.

Eli Lilly and Company also said it would spend US$2.5 billion Opened an injection product production base in Germany and invested in additional $1.6 billion Construction of two new production facilities in its home state of Indiana.

“Our manufacturing organization continues to do an outstanding job executing on the most ambitious expansion agenda in our company’s long history,” Ashkenazy said on the call.

This isn’t the first time Ashkenazi has had to oversee rapid production.

In 2020, the Trump administration announced an agreement to purchase Eli Lilly’s Covid-19 antibody treatment as part of the Department of Health’s Operation Warp Speed. Next year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration stopped One of Eli Lilly’s Covid-19 antibody treatments, bamlanivimab, determined that the treatment itself may not work well against variants.

Ashkenazy told the CFO Podcast that Eli Lilly entered the coronavirus testing market to try to ramp up production at a time of dire need.

“We’re not a medical device company, we’re not a hospital,” Askenazi said. “But we decided to step in at our own expense and set up a testing site at the base of the building.”

Ashkenazi also helped digitize some research during the pandemic and expand predictive analytics for manufacturing and sales.

“We didn’t stop there,” she said. “We decided to develop antibody therapies to treat COVID-19, which is outside the scope of our business.”

Along the way, the Ashkenazi had to deal with a lot of public pressure. Last year, Eli Lilly and Company announced that new obesity drugs, which are life-saving for some people, would be expensive as whistleblowers and government groups criticized them. price reduction It reduced the cost of its most commonly prescribed insulin by 70% and expanded a program that caps patients’ out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 per month.

However, in April, a $13.5 million settlement was reached between Eli Lilly and buyers of insulin drugs. scrapped after a judge refused to certify the class in the case.

Last year, Eli Lilly and Company settle down A whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former employee alleges production problems and wrongful practices involving the pricing of diabetes drugs and insulin. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into an Eli Lilly and Company factory in New Jersey due to suspected manufacturing practices and data falsification. The FDA discovered more defects at the plant last year, Reuters reported in January.

At Alphabet, Ashkenazi faces equally huge but distinct challenges.

The company’s core advertising business is on the mend after a difficult 2023, when companies cut ad spending in response to soaring inflation and macroeconomic concerns.

income Growth of 15% in the first quarter was the fastest growth since early 2022. The company’s stock price has risen 26% this year and is close to an all-time high.

At the same time, although Alphabet is one of the largest companies in the world, it is still a founder-controlled enterprise, with Larry Page and Sergey Brin “maintaining more than 51% of the total voting power of our company, but owning Less than 12% of stocks”.Newest Agency filing.

Ashkenazi joins at a time of cultural change at a company known for high salaries, lavish benefits and a vibrant culture in its early decades. Despite record profits, employees have recently become frustrated with declining morale as the company continues to cut costs and are demanding a return to the office after the pandemic.

—CNBC’s Eric Rosenbaum and NBC researcher Toby Lyles contributed to this report.

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