Dave Ricks, CEO of pharmaceutical brand Eli Lilly, recently appeared on the Cheeky Pint podcast. In their latest episode, Ricks spoke on the complexities that entail and accompany the processes of drug development. Hosted by Patrick and John Collison of Stripe, the session momentarily digressed towards the Eli Lilly CEO’s choice of AI models to gain scientific insight. His response went viral on social media since.
X user NIK, aka @ns123abc, shared the specific clip from the video. He highlighted in the post’s caption that Dave Ricks stated that he does not use ChatGPT. Instead, he relies on Claude AI and xAI (or Grok) for data consultations before and during meetings. This has elicited a great volume of reactions from netizens, and this includes the Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks Shares His Go-To AI Tools for Research
In the latest episode of the Cheeky Pint podcast, hosts Patrick and John Collison interacted with Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks. The primary subject matter of their conversation surrounded his experience in the pharmaceutical industry.
It encompassed important topics such as R&D decisions, clinical trials, pricing of drugs, and business models of pharmaceutical companies, among others. As Ricks spoke of how he stays updated with new research updates in the field of pharmaceuticals, he added that he often consults AI tools for queries related to medical sciences.
Talking about his sources of information, Ricks said, “I read a lot of medical journals. I go to conferences where data is presented. I spend time with our scientists to stay curious. Yeah, now I have at least one or two AIs running every minute of every meeting I’m in, and I just am asking science questions.”
When Patrick Collison asked him about his go-to AI tools for the same, Ricks responded, “I tend to use either Claude or the xAI one. I find it more terse and the references actually check out more often. Sometimes the AIs produce references and they’re actually not the thing that it said and that takes too much work to go cross reference.”
Prior to that, the Eli Lilly CEO stated that ChatGPT is too “verbal,” in his opinion. Interestingly, this exchange is one of the major highlights of the podcast episode that is featured in the first few minutes of the YouTube video.
This drew significant attention from netizens regarding the credibility of Claude AI and xAI or Grok when pitted against ChatGPT. One user commented, “It’s true: GPT and Gemini (surprisingly) are really bad at searching, Claude is agentic, Grok always searches up-to-date info and X posts.” Another person remarked, “When a leader at that level singles out “accuracy of references” as the deciding factor, it tells you everything. It’s not about features, it’s about trust.” Nevertheless, Elon Musk’s repost of the clip with his reaction has gone viral too.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk Reacts to Dave Ricks’s AI Choice
In his repost of Dave Ricks’s choice to use Claude and xAI, the Tesla CEO simply wrote one word: “Cool.” And it didn’t take long for social media to respond to Musk’s reaction. Many users agreed to Ricks’s opinion and appreciated how resourceful Grok is as an AI tool. One user wrote a considerable length on how Grok has helped in “career management.” Another wittily wrote, “Elon drops one word and the internet writes essays.”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2025
The Eli Lilly CEO’s acknowledgement of Grok’s role as a go-to tool for clarifying queries pertaining to science speaks volumes of the centrality of AI in knowledge generation and research. Given Ricks’ engagement with R&D and how he stays in the loop with academic research simultaneously, AI’s potential to further the modes of enquiry is evident in his undertakings.
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