By Ronn Torossian, Founder and Chairman, 5W
Five pharma CEOs show how AI engines render executives through their therapeutic category: David Ricks of Eli Lilly leads at 82 and Stephane Bancel of Moderna trails at 34. That is the finding of Study 11 in the 5W Reputation Index: Pharma CEOs, which measured eighteen chief executives across five AI engines with seventy-plus retrieval-intent prompts each. AI engines have compressed the CEO role into the therapeutic-category role: own the category, own the portrait.
Last updated October 26, 2026.
How Do the 5 Pharma CEOs Compare?
| Rank | CEO | Company | AI reputation score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | David Ricks | Eli Lilly | 82 |
| 2 | Pascal Soriot | AstraZeneca | 74 |
| 3 | Emma Walmsley | GSK | 68 |
| 4 | Mike Doustdar | Novo Nordisk | 42 |
| 5 | Stephane Bancel | Moderna | 34 |
Source: 5W Reputation Index, Study 11. Directional estimates from modeled engine outputs.
1. David Ricks, Eli Lilly: 82
David Ricks holds the series high at 82. Ask an AI engine about Eli Lilly and it renders Ricks through Mounjaro, along with Zepbound and Kisunla, after fifteen years of category-defining approvals inside one Indianapolis institution. His Sentiment score of 84 and Accuracy score of 86 are the highest single-dimension scores in the pharma cohort. The engines do not render Ricks as the operator of a company. They render him as the personification of a category.
2. Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca: 74
Pascal Soriot scores 74 after fourteen years as CEO and the second-largest oncology franchise globally. His is the longest-tenured Big Pharma engine portrait the study has measured.
3. Emma Walmsley, GSK: 68
Emma Walmsley scores 68, built on the Shingrix franchise and the Haleon demerger. She is also the cleanest crisis-recovery case in the cohort: the Zantac litigation resolved in 2024 without lasting portrait drag.
4. Mike Doustdar, Novo Nordisk: 42
Mike Doustdar scores 42, ten months into his tenure. He inherited a portrait already damaged by category loss to Lilly, and the engines attribute the slippage to the incumbent, not the predecessor.
5. Stephane Bancel, Moderna: 34
Stephane Bancel holds the series low at 34. Ask about Moderna and the engines still render Bancel through the COVID vaccine, three years after the commercial cycle ended. His Sentiment score of 26 and Control score of 22 are the lowest in the cohort, and external commentary now writes the Bancel portrait rather than Bancel himself. Executive departures across the CFO, CMO, and R&D chief roles add to the picture.
Why Does AI Act as Pharma's Institutional Memory?
The GLP-1 category advance now writes eighteen pharma-CEO portraits simultaneously, and no other sector the study has measured produces a comparable single-category effect. A category leader shapes the AI-rendered portraits of every competitor in the category at once. Pfizer's Albert Bourla is rendered through the same COVID vaccine, plus a decade of Medicare drug-price coverage the human news cycle has moved past. Every therapeutic-category advance now becomes part of an executive's long-term reputation, and so does every category loss. Boards should be measuring this every quarter.
What Does This Mean for Pharma Communications Teams?
Quarterly monitoring of the CEO's AI-rendered reputation should sit next to earnings-call prep, not below it. A category win by a competitor can quietly rewrite a leader's engine portrait even when the company's own metrics have not moved. Teams that track sentiment, accuracy, and control scores across the five engines can catch a drifting portrait before it hardens into the default AI answer, and can push updated clinical, pipeline, and leadership facts back into the sources these engines cite most often when they render a named executive.
The full study, including six proprietary sub-indices, two of them pharma-specific (Category Dominance and Pipeline Continuity), is live now: Read Study 11: Pharma CEOs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which pharma CEO scored highest in the 5W Reputation Index?
David Ricks of Eli Lilly scored 82, the series high, with the highest Sentiment (84) and Accuracy (86) scores in the pharma cohort.
Which pharma CEO scored lowest?
Stephane Bancel of Moderna scored 34, the series low, with the lowest Sentiment (26) and Control (22) scores in the cohort.
How many CEOs and engines did the study cover?
Eighteen pharma chief executives across five AI engines, with seventy-plus retrieval-intent prompts each.
Why does a competitor's category win change a CEO's AI portrait?
AI engines render executives through their therapeutic category, so a category leader such as Lilly in GLP-1 shapes the portraits of every competitor in the category at the same time.
The 5W Reputation Index is an in-house research franchise of 5W, a PR, creative and GEO agency, measuring how leading AI systems render named principals. Directional estimates from modeled engine outputs.
