AstraZeneca

The company that became AstraZeneca has two separate origin stories. Sweden's Astra AB was founded in 1913 in Södertälje as a pharmaceutical company; it built a global reputation on drugs including the local anaesthetic Xylocaine (lidocaine), the ulcer treatment Losec (omeprazole), and the inhaled asthma therapy Pulmicort. The UK's Zeneca Group was formed in 1993 when Imperial Chemical Industries demerged its pharmaceutical and agrochemical divisions; Zeneca's origins went back to ICI's 1930s drug research. The two companies merged on April 6, 1999, in a $35 billion deal that created a British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant with a combined portfolio but significant patent expiration problems on the horizon.

Through the early 2000s, AstraZeneca faced what analysts called a "patent cliff" — the simultaneous expiration of patents on its most valuable drugs. Losec (Nexium's predecessor) had already faced generic competition; Crestor (rosuvastatin, a cholesterol statin) was a key asset but faced Lipitor from Pfizer. The company spent heavily on R&D but struggled to replace revenue from expiring patents fast enough. Pfizer made an unsolicited $118 billion acquisition bid in 2014 — the largest ever proposed for a British company. AstraZeneca's board rejected it, arguing the company's prospects were greater than Pfizer's offer implied. That judgment would prove correct.

CEO Pascal Soriot, appointed in 2012, made a strategic decision that reshaped the company: he concentrated AstraZeneca's pipeline on oncology — cancer treatments — and moved the global headquarters from London to Cambridge, positioning the company within the world's leading pharmaceutical research cluster. The Cambridge Biomedical Campus, adjacent to Addenbrooke's Hospital, gave AstraZeneca proximity to the University of Cambridge, the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and dozens of biotech companies. The Discovery Centre — designed by Herzog & de Meuron and opened in 2021 — became AstraZeneca's physical commitment to scientific excellence.

AstraZeneca partnered with the University of Oxford to develop a COVID-19 vaccine (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) in 2020 — supplying it at cost during the pandemic. The vaccine was distributed to billions of people globally, particularly in lower-income countries, representing one of the largest public health contributions in pharmaceutical history. Beyond COVID, AstraZeneca's oncology portfolio — particularly Tagrisso for lung cancer, Imfinzi for various cancers, and Lynparza for ovarian cancer — was driving extraordinary revenue growth. China had become AstraZeneca's second-largest market, with a commercial organisation of thousands of people across dozens of Chinese cities.

AstraZeneca reported total revenue of $54 billion for 2024 — an 18% increase on the prior year — with oncology representing over 40% of revenue, cardiovascular/renal/metabolic over 20%, rare diseases 16%, and respiratory/immunology 15%. The TTM revenue as of April 2026 was $58.7 billion. The company held 16 blockbuster medicines and announced results of 16 positive Phase III studies in 2025. By 2030, AstraZeneca aimed to achieve $80 billion in total revenue and launch at least 20 new medicines — one of the most ambitious growth targets in pharmaceutical history from a company that had been written off less than fifteen years earlier.