Novo exits hims & Hers partnership, citing concerns over compounded obesity drugs

Novo Nordisk A/S scrapped a partnership with Hims & Hers Health Inc. after less than two months, saying the U.S. company is using “deceptive marketing” to sell copycat versions of its obesity blockbuster Wegovy.

Hims, a telehealth platform, wasn’t stepping back enough from its practice of mass marketing off-brand imitations of the weight-loss medicine, Novo executives said.

“The big issue with Hims is that we had an agreement that the mass compounding would stop and unfortunately it didn’t stop,” said Ludovic Helfgott, executive vice president of product and portfolio strategy at Novo, in an interview. “That’s why we ended the partnership.”

In a post on X, Hims Chief Executive Officer Andrew Dudum called Novo executive comments “misleading.” He said Novo had been pressuring Hims to “steer patients to Wegovy regardless of whether it was clinically best for patients. ... We refuse to be strong-armed,” he said, adding that Hims will continue to offer “a range of treatments, including Wegovy.”

The split is the latest in a series of unpleasant surprises for Novo that began last year after it became Europe’s most valuable company due to the success of Wegovy and the related diabetes drug Ozempic. The Danish drugmaker has ousted its CEO and faced clinical-trial setbacks and waning obesity market share in the US. Novo had counted on the Hims partnership to broaden access in the U.S., where it’s losing ground to Eli Lilly & Co.

OpenAI scrubs mention of Jony Ive alliance

A budding partnership between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and legendary iPhone designer Jony Ive to develop a new artificial intelligence hardware product has hit a legal snag after a federal judge ruled they must temporarily stop marketing the new venture.

OpenAI last month announced it was buying io Products, a product and engineering company co-founded by Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion. It quickly faced a trademark complaint from a startup with a similarly sounding name, IYO, which is also developing AI hardware that it had pitched to Altman’s personal investment firm and Ive’s design firm in 2022.

U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson ruled late Friday that IYO has a strong enough trademark infringement case to proceed to a hearing in October.

Until then, she ordered Altman, Ive and OpenAI to refrain from “using the IYO mark, and any mark confusingly similar thereto, including the IO mark in connection with the marketing or sale of related products.”

Trump Media buying $400M of its shares

President Donald Trump’s media company plans to buy back up to $400 million of its stock, which have lost 46% of their value this year.

Trump Media and Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social media platform, said Monday that the acquisition will improve its financial flexibility. It will retire the shares after they are purchased, meaning these particular shares can’t be reissued.

Companies can drive their stock higher by acquiring or removing the number of company shares outstanding. Trump is the largest stakeholder in Trump Media, with about 114 million shares.

Shares of Trump Media rose just over 2% Monday. But the shares appeared to peak about a month after the company went public in late March. The company said early this year that it lost $400.9 million in 2024.

Compiled from Bloomberg and Associated Press reports.