Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) shares slipped 1% in overnight trading heading into Friday as investors weighed rising competition from WeightWatchers and Eli Lilly against the company's expanding AI ambitions. The stock jumped 2% on Thursday to $28.01, putting it on track for a second straight weekly gain.
CEO Andrew Dudum responded to Anthropic's latest research on X, saying the AI advances represent a shift "from super helpful to superhuman" with implications for population health. "There's so much to be optimistic about," he said.
Anthropic's AI progress and what it means for healthcare
Anthropic said its internal data shows Claude models are accelerating AI development itself, with engineers now shipping 8x more code per quarter than they did between 2021 and 2025. The company described this as a possible path toward recursive self-improvement, where AI systems help build more capable successors.
Anthropic said such advances could have major implications across fields including science and healthcare. For Hims, that aligns with a strategy that treats AI as core infrastructure rather than an add-on feature.
Hims builds a healthcare super app
Hims has been expanding beyond telehealth prescriptions into a full healthcare ecosystem. Last week, it added partners including iFIT, Ladder, Pvolve, HelloFresh, Factor, MyFitnessPal, Flo Health, Natural Cycles, and Dexcom's Stelo continuous glucose monitor to its Benefits platform, broadening its reach across fitness, nutrition, metabolic health, sleep, and women's health.
Last month, the company launched Labs AI, an AI healthcare assistant that helps users understand lab results, biomarker trends, and long-term health risks through personalized analysis. "This is a preview of how we're building AI across Hims & Hers: not as a layer on top of care, but as infrastructure inside it," the company said. The company has also expanded into diagnostics, hormone health, preventive care, and lab testing over the past year.
Dudum's interest in Claude and its healthcare potential fits this pattern. Hims is positioning AI as the connective tissue between its growing list of services, not a separate product line.
Competition heats up on GLP-1s
Hims recently launched generic semaglutide in Canada through a partnership with Apotex, its first international rollout of a generic GLP-1 treatment. In March, the company started a commercial partnership with Novo Nordisk to distribute branded Ozempic and Wegovy through its platform, following resolution of prior legal disputes over compounded semaglutide.
But competitors are moving just as quickly. On Thursday, WeightWatchers said its Med+ program is now available through Eli Lilly's LillyDirect platform, giving patients another route to GLP-1 medications alongside behavioral, nutritional, and clinical support.
Retail sentiment on Stocktwits was neutral with low message volume. One user said, "I'm still long-term bullish here. $HIMS is basically the 'consumer layer' of healthcare disruption in my view." Another pointed to the Novo Nordisk partnership as a constraint on short sellers: "The NVO partnership has trapped them from March. They could never get out and now the time and pressure is building. Just hodl."
HIMS stock has declined 48% over the past year.
Why this matters for healthcare professionals
The convergence of AI infrastructure and GLP-1 distribution is reshaping how patients access care. Hims is betting that AI-powered lab interpretation and personalized risk analysis will differentiate its platform as LillyDirect and WeightWatchers compete for the same patients. For clinicians and administrators, the practical takeaway is that patient expectations are shifting: they will increasingly expect lab results explained in plain language, treatment options compared across brands and generics, and care coordinated across multiple vendors. Understanding which platforms offer genuine AI integration versus marketing claims will matter when advising patients on where to seek care.
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