Pfizer

Pfizer Inc. is an American drug and biotech company based at The Spiral in Manhattan, New York City. Founded in 1849 by German immigrants Charles Pfizer and Charles F. Erhart, it ranks among the oldest pharmaceutical firms in North America. The company makes medicines and vaccines for areas including immunology, oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, and neurology. Its top-selling products in 2025 were Eliquis ($7.9 billion, 13% of total revenue), Prevnar ($6.5 billion, 10%), Vyndaqel ($6.4 billion, 10%), Comirnaty ($4.4 billion, 7%), Ibrance ($4.1 billion, 7%), and Paxlovid ($2.4 billion, 4%). That year, 59% of revenue came from the United States, 5% from China, and 36% from other nations. Pfizer is fifth among the largest biomedical companies by revenue, 69th on the Fortune 500, and 73rd on the Forbes Global 2000.

The company started in 1849 as Charles Pfizer & Company, set up by two cousins from Ludwigsburg, Germany. Their first product was santonin, an antiparasitic, made at a Bartlett Street lab in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It sold well, but citric acid production drove growth in the 1880s. Pfizer bought more land in Williamsburg to expand its factory, keeping offices on Flushing Avenue into the 1960s; the Brooklyn plant shut down in 2009. Both founders built homes in the Clinton Hill district, a wealthy Gilded Age neighborhood. In 1881, the company moved its headquarters to 81 Maiden Lane in Manhattan, and expanded to Chicago the next year. By 1906, sales topped $3 million.

World War I cut off supplies of calcium citrate, which Pfizer had imported from Italy for citric acid. To solve this, the company found a fungus that could turn sugar into citric acid, and by 1919 it had commercialized that process. This gave Pfizer expertise in fermentation, which it later used during World War II to mass-produce penicillin in deep-submergence tanks for treating wounded Allied soldiers. The company also ran a global soil-collection program to improve penicillin yields, gathering 135,000 samples. On June 2, 1942, Pfizer incorporated under Delaware law.

After penicillin prices dropped, Pfizer looked for more profitable antibiotics. In 1950, it discovered oxytetracycline, shifting from a fine-chemicals maker to a research-based drug company. It started a drug-discovery program using in vitro synthesis alongside fermentation research. In 1959, it set up an animal health division with a 700-acre farm and lab in Terre Haute, Indiana. By the 1950s, Pfizer had offices in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom. In 1960, it moved its medical research labs from New York City to Groton, Connecticut. In 1980, it launched Feldene (piroxicam), the company’s first product to hit $1 billion in sales. John Powers, Jr. became CEO in 1965, succeeding John McKeen. As Brooklyn’s neighborhood declined in the 1970s and 1980s, Pfizer partnered with New York City to build low- and middle-income housing, renovate apartments for the homeless, and start a charter school. Edmund T. Pratt Jr. took over as CEO in 1972.

In 1981, Pfizer got approval for Diflucan (fluconazole), the first oral treatment for severe fungal infections. In 1986, it bought worldwide rights to Zithromax (azithromycin) from Pliva. In 1989, scientists Peter Dunn and Albert Wood created Viagra (sildenafil) for high blood pressure and angina. Early trials showed it didn’t work for heart disease, but volunteers reported increased erections days after taking it. The drug was patented in the United Kingdom in 1991 as a heart medication, then in the United States in 1996, and received FDA approval.