For some, the answer to a dodgy gray market is to bring the pharmaceutical supply chain back to American soil.Nov 12, 2026, 8:00 PM UTCThe SS Jeremiah O’Brien, a WWII ship/peptide party location.| Photo: Haus FundThis is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they’re going to change your life. We’ll be taking a break next week and will be back on November 25th. Opt in for Optimizer here.The SS Jeremiah O’Brien is a World War II Liberty ship. The hulking vessel was built in 56 days. It made 11 trips to Normandy, France, to supply the Allied powers in the fight against German U-boats. Last week, it was the site of a black-tie peptide party thrown by a trio of Gen Z venture capitalists.Roughly 150 people attended the event, where four types of peptide samples were provided to guests — no injections. One was a topical cream with GHK-Cu, while the other three were dissolvable sublingual strips from peptide startup Afterglow. GHK-Cu is a popular skincare ingredient, but it’s unclear how well sublingual peptide strips work. The topic of the night wasn’t just the state of peptides. The venue was a deliberate reference to American industrial prowess — and why the pharmaceutical supply chain ought to be centered in the United States.The timing couldn’t have been more pointed.Sourcing is one of the biggest question marks with gray-market peptides — something the US Department of Health and Human Services is trying to address with its recent interim policy decision allowing certain unapproved peptides for compounding.The decision is a controversial one. FDA career scientists haven’t endorsed it, though to the average person it might seem like they have. In fact, at a public hearing in July, FDA scientists categorically stated that there wasn’t enough evidence proving safety or efficacy for the experimental peptides in question. Some industry experts have cautioned that the HHS’s decision threatens the current clinical trial framework. By circumventing gold-standard clinical trials, it arguably allows telehealth providers and compounding pharmacies to bypass the approval process and create a parallel, dubiously regulated market.But for the party’s organizers Roxana Grunenwald, Yuva Krishnapillai, and Elia Ahmadi — all three are from Haus Fund, a biotech accelerator — this was an opportunity to make the case for American peptides. Hence the party on a wartime cargo ship, where guests left with stickers and hats emblazoned with “My Peptides Are Made in America.”Haus Fund’s Gen Z VCs talk “Biological Dynamism.” Photo: Haus FundListening to the three speak, they wouldn’t strike you as typical hooah patriots or MAHA activists — though there’s some overlap in their talking points. They’re venture capitalists promoting a certain viewpoint that’s trending in Silicon Valley right now. But it’s not just them making this argument. Hims & Hers — one of the most recognizable telehealth brands right now — is also hopping on the American peptide bandwagon.The push for American manufacturing is a thorny one. Last year, President Donald Trump’s tariff policies also reignited the American manufacturing argument, though the reality is it’s difficult to return to “made in America” after decades spent shaping the country into a services-based economy.Pharmaceuticals have also globalized. According to the US Pharmacopeia, 51 percent of all US prescription active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) comes from India and the European Union. China accounts for 10 percent. But when it comes to gray-market peptides, there’s a reason they’re commonly referred to as “Chinese peptides.” The vast majority of these research chemicals sold online come from Chinese manufacturers.“Right now, Americans are buying consumer peptides from gray-market sellers in China. And that concerns me because American consumers have little recourse if something goes wrong,” Ahmadi said in response to a panel question. “This is not a blanket criticism of China. This is not a criticism of Chinese people. America needs to be able to make its own medicines.”“I think this is a really good first step in solving the gray market problem,” Krishnapillai tells me, referring to the HHS’s interim decision. While building industrial infrastructure is a lengthy, complicated, and expensive process, he argues that this decision opens the door for compounding pharmacies to build a supply chain that adheres to US consumer safety laws. That in turn could give the FDA more insight into how to more effectively regulate the market. “The FDA [will be] able to see from a bird’s-eye view a lot more clarity, which will allow for structure to be built out and eventually a new path to API classification,” he adds.“We’re taking the stance that if people will be purchasing these peptides and taking them, sometimes even injecting, we want them to be American peptides,” adds Grunenwald. “We want them to be both compounded, produced, and verified on American soil.”“The hardware industry — semiconductors, the compute industry, electronics — have all recognized that the reliance on China for critical minerals is a huge issue. That’s very clear. The bio industry has not yet had that same pushback and the same epiphany about our reliance on Chinese APIs. We aim to bring this onshore. It’ll take a lot of money and a lot of time, but it’s not impossible,” says Grunenwald.For Ahmadi, onshoring peptides back to America is also a matter of regulatory consistency.“That made-in-America stamp is really only the beginning,” he says. “If we don’t have our own domestic production, we won’t be able to enforce our own regulations. Our markets are always going to be flooded by foreign imports and we won’t be able to have accountability to American consumers. So, we see this as the first step in a larger conversation to have America set the global standard for quality and safety in this new space.”Broadly speaking, these points have some merit. Several gray-market peptide users I’ve spoken with for an upcoming story stated that the mere act of importing “research drugs” and worrying about customs was a significant source of anxiety. That said, cost is another major reason why my sources tell me they opted to seek Chinese suppliers. It’s too soon to tell, but American-made peptides will likely be more expensive. That’s because an end-to-end US supply chain for these drugs is no easy feat.Even so, for some, that extra expense is worth it if it means signaling a higher-quality product.“We purchased an API manufacturing facility in California recently … Our intention is to leverage that capability to provide US-made API, and as a result, US-made product through the whole supply chain,” says Dr. Anant Vinjamoori, chief medical officer at Hims & Hers. The company purchased the facility last year, though it does partner with other companies globally to deliver compounded medications outside the US.Hims is launching Peptide Plus just as they purchased a new California manufacturing facility.But in this particular case, Vinjamoori is also specifically referring to Peptides Plus, a forthcoming service from Hims & Hers announced in the wake of the HHS interim policy. In a blog announcing Peptides Plus, Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum writes that the company “spent years building the infrastructure we need in our very own U.S.-based peptide manufacturing facility.” At launch, the company plans to provide access to “Sermorelin, Glutathione, B12, NAD+, and L-carnitine, with BPC-157 and TB-500 to follow when allowable.” Notably, some of these substances, like vitamin B12 and NAD+, aren’t peptides at all. Meanwhile, sermorelin and glutathione are already legal. All of these, with the exception of BPC-157 and TB-500, are currently available through legal pathways.“I think it’s important not just to be able to say, ‘Oh, this is US made,’ but because it gives us direct oversight into the whole process,” says Vinjamoori, who says that he had prescribed peptides to patients in the past before the Biden administration moved certain research peptides to the no-compounding list.“Even then, there was inconsistency between compounding pharmacies. Everyone knew this,” he says, noting that doctors would individually recommend pharmacies based on what they were prescribing. “That to me, is still not ideal. That’s why we really felt it was worth making this investment — and to be clear, this is not easy.”When asked about how this might affect Peptide Plus pricing, Vinjamoori demurred, stating that the company would have more to share in “due time.”There are yet many unknowns with regard to the HHS decision and how it’ll impact the peptide economy at large. The decision is most notably an interim policy. It’s not necessarily a permanent or lasting change. It was also made before the midterm elections, so who can say how the policy winds will shift concerning tariffs and whether the zeal for “made in America” will fizzle as a result.But for now, it’s more than likely that you’ll start seeing some vendors touting that their peptides are proudly made in America. It’s entirely possible that they might imply that makes their product “safer.” That might be true with regard to sourcing and, to a degree, accountability. But it’s not the whole story. After all, in peptide America, sourcing is only part of the problem.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Victoria SongThe Verge DailyA free daily digest of the news that matters most.Email (required)By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Meet the people who want peptides to be made in America
