Hims vs. two Goliaths

Hims has a reputation in the industry for making bold moves. Now the legal risks are catching up.

Hey Snackers, While Google Trends data shows the searches you'd expect around the Super Bowl, like "what time does the Super Bowl start" and "last time Seahawks went to Super Bowl," every season, searches for "roman numerals" also spike, with search volume hitting a new peak this February. At least stumped football fans in 2026 trying to decode Super Bowl LX have an easier time than fans will in the year 12,965, who'd have to refer to the Big Game as Super Bowl MMMMMMMMMMDCCCCLXXXXVIIII. The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all climbed higher yesterday, with the benchmark index trading just below its record closing high. Tech was the best-performing sector for the second consecutive session. COMPOUNDING ISSUES Hims built a boundary-pushing health business. Now the legal risks are catching up. Hims & Hers aired its second Super Bowl commercial on Sunday, questioning a healthcare system it describes as built for the wealthy and again painting itself as a disrupter of the status quo. "Disruption" can cut both ways, though.  A day earlier, the telehealth giant bowed to pressure from the Food and Drug Administration and said it would stop selling a product it had launched just two days earlier: a copy of Novo Nordisk's new weight-loss pill.  The next day, Hims was hit with a lawsuit by the Danish pharmaceutical giant alleging patent infringement.  GLP-1 drugs have been a major source of growth for Hims. The company disclosed that it generated about $420 million in GLP-1 revenue in the first half of 2025, nearly double the roughly $225 million it reported for all of 2024. Hims is now facing down well-heeled opponents from two different angles. First, the government: on Friday, the top lawyer at the Department of Health and Human Services referred Hims to the Department of Justice "for investigation for potential violations by Hims of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and applicable Title 18 provisions." A DOJ investigation opens the door to civil or criminal enforcement that goes beyond the FDA's usual administrative tools, such as warning letters or recalls. Second, Novo Nordisk: Novo sued Hims on Monday, accusing it of infringing on one of its key patents for semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy. John Kuckelman, head of intellectual property at Novo, told Stat on Monday that Hims has been infringing on its IP since the shortage ended, but said its launch of a pill "was a tipping point." He said the "safety issues at stake" led the company to take action. It has been long speculated that Novo may bring a suit defending its IP. The suit carries some risk: if the drugmaker were to lose, it could invalidate the patent on its most lucrative drugs. Kuckelman said the company has "full confidence in the validity of our compound patent." He said "at minimum," the drugmaker wants reasonable royalties, but it also intends to recover lost profits. THE TAKEAWAY Hims has a reputation in the industry for making bold moves, which until recently it has done largely without consequences. But as its legal troubles mount, the company's stock has taken a hit. Hims is now trading at roughly the same level as when it first began selling copies of Novo's GLP-1 drugs in May 2024. Read more AD 'EM UP OpenAI is now officially showing ads, just as its competition with Anthropic begins to heat up Just a day after Anthropic's Super Bowl ad aired, making fun of the concept of ad-backed AI chatbots, OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT for its free and Go subscription tiers. In a blog post, OpenAI reiterated that ads wouldn't affect ChatGPT's responses and would be "clearly labeled as sponsored and visually separated from the organic answer." "Our goal is for ads to support broader access to more powerful ChatGPT features while maintaining the trust people place in ChatGPT for important and personal tasks," the company wrote. "We're starting with a test to learn, listen, and make sure we get the experience right." Advertising is one way the company, which is expected to go public late this year, could offset the massive cost of running its service. The Information previously reported that OpenAI is aiming for ad spending commitments of less than $1 million per advertiser during the testing phase — far cheaper than a Super Bowl prime-time spot like Anthropic's. THE TAKEAWAY The competition between OpenAI and Anthropic continues to intensify. That comedic Anthropic ad during the most watched television event of the year poked fun at OpenAI's plans to add advertisements to ChatGPT, something it says it will not do to its Claude chatbot. Both companies released new models last week with improved coding capabilities.  In case OpenAI employees were beginning to sweat from all the pressure, CEO Sam Altman sought to assure the team that the company has gotten its mojo back, telling employees in an internal Slack group that the company is "back to exceeding 10% monthly growth" and is seeing "insane" growth in its Codex coding tool. Per the report, Altman said another new model is coming this week. Read more THE BEST THING WE READ TODAY New study finds AI doesn't reduce work — it intensifies it Last week, we wondered if AI was really taking our jobs, and this week we're reading that for those of us who've seen AI enter our daily work, that feeling we have that AI hasn't created the magical work-life balance utopia we were promised is starting to be backed by evidence.  Read more Snacks Shots  🎬 Oscars: This weekend's Directors Guild of America Awards have massive predictive power on the Oscars race, so the win for Paul Thomas Anderson ("One Battle After Another") pushed him to an 89% chance* of taking the Oscar for Best Director, and "One Battle After Another" is now up to a 74% chance of winning Best Picture. 🏒 Hockey: This afternoon, the US will play Canada in the preliminary round of the women's hockey event at the Olympics. The rivalry between the US and Canada on the ice is legendary, and while this game has stakes mainly when it comes to determining seeding in the knockout stage, it's still a game between the two strongest favorites in the event. The US has a 61% chance of taking gold to Canada's 38% chance, with the entire rest of the field a distant third.  *Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC. What else we're Snackin' Bernstein analyst says "bitcoin bear case is the weakest in its history" and maintains his $150,000 price target on bitcoin Roblox isn't just for the kids anymore: its 18-plus player base increased 50% last year, and they are way more profitable for the platform The EU wants Meta to open up access to rival AI chatbots through WhatsApp Snack Fact of the Day Meme coins have lost all their 2026 gains.  Tuesday December retail sales Earnings expected from Robinhood, Coca-Cola, CVS, AstraZeneca, Spotify, Fiserv, Marriott, BP, Duke Energy, Lyft, Ford, Zillow, AIG, and Cloudflare Was this email forwarded to you? Don't miss out on future stories — subscribe to Snacks and get your daily dose of financial news straight to your inbox.  Craving more insights in your inbox? Subscribe to Chartr and The Wrap for quality reads. 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