Alphabet's former CFO is now focusing on generative AI after being at the center of the GLP-1 boom.

• Eli Lilly's CFO, Anat Ashkenazi, has been managing the company's finances during a period of significant expansion.
• The world's most valuable drugmaker is now Eli Lilly, thanks to the success of weight loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound.
• At Alphabet, she joins the C-suite during a period of significant transformations, with the company placing a strong emphasis on investing in generative artificial intelligence.

Ruth Porat, the outgoing finance chief, spent the past year and a half trying to help her internet company navigate the generative artificial intelligence boom. Meanwhile, her successor is now knee-deep in a very different phenomenon: anti-obesity drugs.

On Wednesday, Alphabet announced that Anat Ashkenazi will be its new CFO after a year-long search. During that time, Ashkenazi has managed the books at the world's most valuable drugmaker, which has experienced high demand for weight loss treatments Mounjaro and Zepbound, causing supply struggles.

On Eli Lilly's first-quarter earnings call in April, Ashkenazi acknowledged the frustration of hundreds of thousands of people who face prescription delays or uncertainties in obtaining their medication for Mounjaro and Zepbound.

GLP-1s, a class of treatments that have gained popularity in recent years due to their effectiveness in aiding weight loss, are medications that mimic a hormone produced in the gut to suppress a person's appetite. According to a survey released last month by KFF, approximately one in eight adults in the U.S. have utilized GLP-1s.

Eli Lilly's shares have surged 90% in the past year and are currently trading at a record high. The company announced better-than-expected results in April and increased its full-year forecast.

Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks stated in a press release on Wednesday that during her last three years as Lilly's CFO, we have witnessed tremendous growth and established a foundation to help us serve even more patients with our medicines.

Ashkenazi, who has spent the past 23 years at Eli Lilly, is leaving the drugmaker's headquarters in Indiana to join Google in the San Francisco Bay Area at the end of July. This move comes at a crucial moment for Google as the finance unit is undergoing a restructuring that is affecting the entire company, with a focus on investing in AI to keep up with the rapidly evolving market.

Alphabet has appointed Porat as its new president and chief investment officer, nine years after she joined the company from . She and Ashkenazi will both report to CEO Sundar Pichai.

CNBC requested an interview with Ashkenazi, but the alphabet did not respond immediately.

In 2001, Ashkenazi, 51, left her career in Israel's financial services industry and joined Eli Lilly, where she entered the company's new venture capital division, which was founded by her then-spouse Ron Laufer.

In 2021, Ashkenazi became CFO after serving as finance chief for global divisions, including manufacturing and research and development, and as chief strategy officer. She replaced John Smiley, who resigned following allegations of an inappropriate relationship with an employee and forfeited millions of dollars in bonus and equity awards.

Ashkenazi, who was promoted to CFO in the biopharma sector, discovered a frustrating data point: she was the only female CFO in her field. In a 2022 interview with CNBC, she shared that her journey had been relatively smooth, moving from Israel to the U.S. over two decades ago and coming from a culture where gender inequality was less prevalent. She admitted that she hadn't given it much thought.

"I couldn't care less," Ashkenazi said. "However, not everyone shares that perspective, particularly in the Midwest."

Last year, on the CFO Thought Leader podcast, Ashkenazi disclosed that she spent five years examining the organization from diverse viewpoints.

She stated that the experience expanded her skillset in a more comprehensive manner.

According to public filings, Ashkenazi holds a master of business administration degree from Tel Aviv University and a bachelor's degree in economics and business administration from the Hebrew University.

Fastest growth in decades

Since its establishment in 1876, Eli Lilly has been a prominent U.S. pharmaceutical company. The company is renowned for launching the anti-depressants Prozac in the 1980s and Cymbalta approximately two decades later.

Eli Lilly has experienced significant growth in recent years due to the popularity of GLP-1s. Sales from diabetes drug Mounjaro, which exceeded $5 billion in its first year on the market, and the fast launch of weight loss injection Zepbound helped lift Eli Lilly's revenue by 20% last year to $34 billion, marking the fastest growth since 1990, according to FactSet.

The success of Eli Lilly, coupled with the potential of highly anticipated drugs such as donanemab for Alzheimer's treatment, increased its market cap to nearly $800 billion, making it the largest pharmaceutical company in terms of market value.

The high demand for incretin drugs for weight loss and diabetes treatments has exceeded the available supply, causing many patients to struggle to obtain the medications. According to Ashkenazi, the company has doubled its production capacity for incretin drugs by the end of 2023, thanks to a new facility in North Carolina.

Eli Lilly announced plans to invest $4.1 billion in opening a manufacturing site for injectable products in Germany and building two new production facilities in Indiana.

Ashkenazi stated on the call that our manufacturing organization is performing exceptionally well in executing our most ambitious expansion plan to date.

It's not the first time Ashkenazi has had to oversee rapid production.

In 2020, the Trump administration agreed to purchase Eli Lilly's Covid-19 antibody treatment as part of the health department's "Operation Warp Speed." However, in 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration halted one of Lilly's Covid-19 antibody treatments, bamlanivimab, after determining that the therapy may not be effective against variants.

Eli Lilly entered the Covid testing market to increase production when it was urgently required, as stated by Ashkenazi on the CFO podcast.

"We're not a medical device company, nor a hospital," said Askhenazi. "However, we decided to set up a testing site at the bottom of our building at our own expense."

During the pandemic, Ashkenazi contributed to the digitization of some research and enhanced predictive analytics for manufacturing and sales.

"We didn't stop there," she said. "We decided to expand our business by developing therapeutics, antibody treatment for Covid."

Eli Lilly has responded to public pressure by announcing price cuts of 70% for its most commonly prescribed insulins and expanding a program that caps patient out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 per month.

In April, a $13.5 million settlement between Eli Lilly and buyers of insulin drugs was abandoned after a judge declined to certify a class in the case.

In 2021, Eli Lilly faced a whistleblower lawsuit from a former employee who claimed manufacturing issues and faulty practices related to diabetes drugs and insulin pricing. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into an Eli Lilly plant in New Jersey due to alleged manufacturing practices and data falsification. The FDA discovered more deficiencies at the plant in 2020, as reported by Reuters in January.

A different Google

At Alphabet, Ashkenazi faces a set of challenges that are equally large but very different from those he inherited.

The company's core advertising business is recovering after a challenging 2023, when businesses cut ad spending to cope with inflation and economic uncertainty.

The company experienced its fastest revenue growth since early 2022, with a 15% increase in the first quarter. Additionally, the company announced its first-ever dividend and a $70 billion buyback program. As a result, the stock price has risen 26% this year and is currently trading near its all-time high.

Since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022, Google has been on the defensive for 18 months, with concerns from investors that consumers may soon have new ways to find information online. In response, Google launched a series of generative AI products, but these have been criticized for being rushed and, in some cases, the company was forced to backtrack due to mishaps.

Although Alphabet is one of the largest corporations globally, it is still a founder-controlled enterprise, with Larry Page and Sergey Brin holding "more than 51% of our company's total voting power while owning less than 12% of stock," as stated in the latest proxy filing.

Ashkenazi is joining a company that, for its first couple decades, was known for high pay, extravagant perks and a vibrant culture, at a time when employees have recently expressed frustration over declining morale tied to the company's ongoing cost cuts, despite record profits, and return to office mandates following the pandemic.

This report was contributed to by Eric Rosenbaum from CNBC and Toby Lyles from NBC.

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