AbbVie Inc.

What does AbbVie own?
AbbVie owns a portfolio of prescription drug brands including Skyrizi, Rinvoq, Humira, Imbruvica, Venclexta, Vraylar, Ubrelvy, Qulipta, and Elahere, plus the aesthetics products Botox Cosmetic and Juvederm acquired through the 2020 Allergan deal. All are internally held product brands rather than separate subsidiaries.

Is AbbVie publicly traded?
Yes. AbbVie trades on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker ABBV and is a component of the S&P 500. It has traded publicly since its January 2013 spin-off from Abbott Laboratories, and Abbott retains no ownership stake.

Who founded AbbVie?
AbbVie was not founded by individuals but created as a corporate spin-off from Abbott Laboratories in 2013, led at launch by CEO Richard A. Gonzalez. Its operating heritage traces to Dr. Wallace C. Abbott, who founded Abbott's predecessor drug company in Chicago in 1888.

Where is AbbVie headquartered?
AbbVie is headquartered in North Chicago, Illinois, in the same suburban Chicago corridor where Abbott has long been based. Its principal offices sit at 1 North Waukegan Road.

How many brands does AbbVie own?
AbbVie markets roughly a dozen major product brands, led by Skyrizi, Rinvoq, Humira, Botox, Juvederm, Imbruvica, and Venclexta, plus smaller products across eye care and neuroscience. Unlike consumer conglomerates, its brands are individual prescription medicines rather than retail labels.

Who owns AbbVie?
AbbVie is owned by public shareholders, with Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street as the largest institutional holders. Robert A. Michael serves as chairman and chief executive officer. No founding family or single shareholder controls the company.

What happened to Humira?
U.S. biosimilar competitors launched in January 2023 after AbbVie's patent settlements allowed entry. Humira worldwide revenue fell from a $21.2 billion peak in 2022 to $4.54 billion in 2025, while Skyrizi and Rinvoq grew to replace it, pushing total company revenue to a record $61.16 billion.

AbbVie's heritage is Abbott's pharmaceutical business, which dates to Dr. Wallace C. Abbott's Chicago drug company founded in 1888. The modern entity began on January 1, 2013, when Abbott completed the separation and AbbVie began trading under CEO Richard A. Gonzalez, a longtime Abbott executive who had run the pharma business.

Gonzalez's tenure was dominated by two themes: managing Humira's extraordinary run and hedging against its end. Humira, inherited from Abbott's 2001 acquisition of Knoll Pharmaceuticals, carried AbbVie through the 2010s as cumulative sales passed $200 billion over its commercial life.

Acquisition history tells the hedging story. In 2015 AbbVie paid approximately $21 billion for Pharmacyclics, gaining the blood cancer drug Imbruvica and taking on heavy debt. The 2016 purchase of Stemcentrx for $5.8 billion plus milestones ended in a costly failure when lead candidate Rova-T collapsed in trials and the program was written down. In 2019 AbbVie announced the $63 billion acquisition of Allergan, completed in May 2020, which added Botox therapeutic and cosmetic, the Juvederm filler line, Vraylar, Ubrelvy, and a broader neuroscience portfolio.

The defining event arrived in January 2023, when U.S. biosimilars to Humira launched after years of patent litigation settlements. Humira's worldwide revenue fell from $21.2 billion in 2022 to $4.54 billion in 2025. AbbVie had spent the preceding decade building the replacement: Skyrizi, an IL-23 inhibitor approved in 2019, and Rinvoq, a JAK inhibitor approved the same year, both expanded across rheumatology, dermatology, and gastroenterology indications.

Deal-making continued in 2024 with ImmunoGen, acquired for approximately $10.1 billion and bringing the ovarian cancer antibody-drug conjugate Elahere, and Cerevel Therapeutics for $8.7 billion, adding neuroscience candidates including emraclidine and tavapadon. Emraclidine failed its Phase 2 schizophrenia trials in late 2024, a visible pipeline setback. In 2025 AbbVie continued bolt-on deals, including a roughly $2.1 billion agreement to acquire cell therapy company Capstan Therapeutics.

Richard Gonzalez retired in mid-2024 after leading the company since its creation. Robert A. Michael, AbbVie's former chief financial officer and a company veteran of the spin-off era, became CEO on July 1, 2024 and added the chairman title in February 2025.

FY2025 marked the turnaround's proof point: record net revenues of $61.16 billion, surpassing the pre-LoE peak, with immunology at $30.4 billion, neuroscience at $10.8 billion, oncology at $6.7 billion, and aesthetics at $4.9 billion. Adjusted R&D spend reached $13.8 billion across roughly 90 programs.

AbbVie is a consistent Fortune 500 company and appears on the Forbes Global 2000. It regularly ranks on Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies list in pharmaceuticals and has been recognized on diversity and workplace lists from Forbes and other outlets. Skyrizi's commercial trajectory has been cited in industry rankings of the most successful drug launches of the past decade.

AbbVie's largest reputational issue is the Humira patent estate. The company built more than 130 patents around the drug, a strategy critics called a patent thicket designed to delay biosimilars. Congress scrutinized Humira pricing in 2021 hearings, and AbbVie has faced multiple antitrust suits alleging the patent strategy unlawfully delayed competition; courts have produced mixed outcomes, with a key Seventh Circuit ruling in 2022 finding that amassing patents does not itself violate antitrust law, while related claims have continued through litigation.

Drug pricing criticism extends beyond Humira. AbbVie, like peers, drew attention for repeated U.S. list price increases, and Imbruvica was selected in the first round of Medicare price negotiation under the IRA.

Operationally, the Allergan deal added exposure to litigation inherited from Allergan, including matters tied to legacy products, and the Stemcentrx write-down remains a standard example of failed biotech M&A. In 2024 the emraclidine Phase 2 failure drew investor criticism about the $8.7 billion Cereval purchase price, though the acquired pipeline remains active.