Huberman Is Now Paid by Hims. Here’s What He Said About the Peptides It’s Launching.

Hims & Hers put Andrew Huberman on its board on November 4, six days after previewing its peptide line.

Key Points

• Hims pays him $3.5 million a year in cash for two years of “scientific and brand marketing advisory services,” on top of board pay, and is buying podcast ads from his media company.
• His record on the products Hims plans to sell is mixed. He warned about risks and missing trials, and he also described using sermorelin, NAD+ infusions and BPC-157 himself, some with good results.
• He disclosed his board seat. I found no statement on how he’ll flag the relationship when he discusses Hims products outside paid segments.

The first peptides Hims & Hers says it will launch this month include sermorelin, a growth-hormone booster. In 2024 Andrew Huberman told his listeners that raising growth hormone with a peptide raises “our tumor growth risk and our cancer risk,” and this July he said sermorelin spiked his PSA, which went back to normal when he stopped taking it. On November 4 Hims put him on its board, and it is paying him $3.5 million a year for “scientific and brand marketing advisory services.”

I’ve written a lot about BPC-157 and the peptide gray market, so I went back to what he has said about each product in Hims’s peptide line.

What he said about the products in Hims’s peptide line

Hims & Hers told investors on November 9 that its first peptide products launch in November and include sermorelin, glutathione and NAD+. CEO Andrew Dudum wrote that BPC-157 and TB-500 will follow “when allowable.” The line also includes B12 and L-carnitine, which I left out. Hims’s peptide plans predate his board seat: in 2024 it agreed to buy a California peptide manufacturing plant, telling investors in its shareholder letter that the plant could open up specialties “such as pain management, longevity, and muscle recovery,” and Dudum previewed the line on October 29.

Product	What Huberman said	Where
Sermorelin (a peptide that makes the pituitary release growth hormone)	Besides the cancer-risk warning, he said that “if you have a tumor someplace and it’s small,” raising growth hormone with these peptides “will increase the size of that tumor.” He also called sermorelin and tesamorelin, “at least to my mind,” better options than CJC-1295, another growth-hormone peptide, “should you decide to go down this path.” He mostly stopped taking sermorelin because it cut his REM sleep, and in July said it spiked his PSA, which went back to normal when he stopped.	His peptide episode, April 2024; Tim Ferriss’s podcast, July 2026
NAD+ (a coenzyme every cell uses)	After IV infusions taken when he was run down or recovering from illness, he “felt much much better” and “deemed this as safe” for himself, while saying “there is no clinical trial exploring NAD infusion for sake of vigor, etc. that I am aware of.”	Ask Me Anything episode, October 2023
Glutathione (an antioxidant the body makes)	I couldn’t find an episode where he discusses it as a treatment.	Episodes through June 2026
BPC-157	“BPC 157 is a potential tumor growth risk,” so anyone “concerned about tumors at all” should “be very cautious.” In July: “I’ve tried it. I definitely feel like after a pain or strain, the recovery is faster, but I can’t do the control experiment.” He called the animal data “really impressive” and said he keeps some “in the fridge.”	Peptide episode, April 2024; Ferriss, July 2026
TB-500 (a seven-amino-acid fragment of thymosin beta-4, a peptide the body makes)	He covered the two together, calling TB-500 “a truncated or a shortened version of the thymosin beta 4 peptide.” Of people reporting faster healing on thymosin beta-4: “how would they know how quickly they would heal without the thymosin beta 4? And there’s simply no way to address that question.” He added that “in the absence of clinical trials, we still don’t know if and how they are working in humans,” and that people are starting to take “especially TB-500.”	Peptide episode, April 2024

His NAD+ experience was with IV infusions. Hims’s announcements don’t say what form its NAD+ will take, so I can’t tell whether it is the same treatment.

The money in the Hims filing

Hims disclosed the terms in a filing with the SEC:

Payment	Amount	How long
Board seat (cash plus stock)	$300,000 a year: $50,000 cash and $250,000 in stock, prorated	First term ends at the 2027 annual meeting
Advisory fee, for “scientific and brand marketing advisory services”	$3.5 million a year in cash	Two years
Short videos for Hims’s paid ads, if he chooses to make them	Up to $1 million a year more	Under the advisory deal
Podcast ads, paid to Scicomm Media, the company he co-owns	$5 million a year, of which Hims values his interest at about $2.1 million a year	Up to three years

Under New York Stock Exchange listing rules, the board “has determined that Dr. Huberman does not meet the requirements for independence,” and he sits on no committee. The advisory deal can end early “only by mutual agreement or for uncured material breach.”

An 8-K wouldn’t normally say how his coverage will be handled, and the agreements themselves aren’t public yet; Hims will file them with its 2026 annual report. Both men told Business Insider he will remain free to cover the category broadly.

His disclosure, and his warnings

He said he would tell people if this happened, and he did. In March he wrote on X: “I’m not paid by any pharmaceutical company or peptide company. If that were to change, I of course, would make it known.” On November 9 he announced the board seat on X, writing that the Hims platform “for comprehensive telehealth incl. cardiovascular & hormone health & peptides (GLPs & more) w/start to finish (raw materials incl.) made in USA is making health & vigor available to everyone.” He told Business Insider he first reached out to Dudum, through a mutual friend, and that the two have “some overlapping interests,” including bringing the “best healthcare practices to the broadest number of people.”

The disclosures page on his website now says he is “on the board of Hims & Hers and receives financial compensation,” and that paid sponsorships or sponsored segments “will be clearly identified or otherwise stated during episodes.” Neither the page nor the announcement says how he will flag the Hims relationship when he talks about a product Hims sells, such as sermorelin, outside a paid segment. Business Insider reported that he “did not specify how each podcast episode, social post, or short clip will disclose his board seat and separate marketing relationship with Hims.” As of November 14, five days after his announcement, I found no post on his X account that said how individual episodes, posts or clips would flag it.

His warnings are on the record from before any of this. In 2024 he told listeners “I do not suggest people purchase black market peptides,” and he covered BPC-157 “despite this gap in the human clinical literature.” He repeated one of them on November 9, telling Business Insider, “I don’t know if somebody without an injury needs BPC and TB-500.”

What the compounding rules say about these products

Hims hasn’t said which kind of licensed pharmacy will fill its orders. If its products are compounded under the federal rules for pharmacies making drugs for individual patients (section 503A), each active ingredient has to meet an official USP standard. If there isn’t one, it has to be part of an FDA-approved drug. If neither applies, it has to be on a short FDA list.

Glutathione and plain NAD are on the FDA’s “Category 1” list of substances still under evaluation, and the FDA says it “does not intend to take action” against compounders who use them under its conditions. That is a decision not to enforce, and the FDA can change it. One NAD salt, the disodium salt trihydrate, is in Category 3 instead, which gets no such protection.

Sermorelin is on none of the FDA’s 503A lists. It was the active ingredient in Geref, an FDA-approved drug for children with growth hormone deficiency. The maker discontinued it in 2008, the FDA withdrew the approvals at the maker’s request in 2009, and in 2013 the FDA determined that the Geref products “were not withdrawn from sale for reasons of safety or effectiveness.” I couldn’t find an FDA document that says whether a drug whose approval was withdrawn still counts as FDA-approved for compounding, and I couldn’t check the paywalled USP standards. So I won’t call compounded sermorelin either legal or illegal.

BPC-157 and TB-500 depend on a draft HHS policy whose comment period closed on November 13. Like Category 1, it would be a decision not to enforce rather than an approval: HHS says it “does not intend to take enforcement action” against pharmacies that compound them under its conditions, and that it may revisit the policy. I went through what it would and wouldn’t allow in Is BPC-157 Legal Now?

Where he told people to get peptides

In 2024, talking about growth-hormone peptides like sermorelin, he said “I’m certainly not suggesting anyone do this,” then: “if you do explore it, you work with a board-certified physician. And that you get these compounds from a quality compounding pharmacy or by their name brand prescription.” In July, on BPC-157, he said people ask whether they should take it: “No, you shouldn’t unless you have an injury or maybe in that case, you get clean compounded pharmacy BPC.” On the same show he named three compounding pharmacies and said he had no relationship with them.

Hims describes its service in similar terms: a treatment plan “prescribed and delivered by independent providers,” treatments “supplied by licensed pharmacies,” and its “very own U.S.-based peptide manufacturing facility.” He specified a board-certified physician; Hims says independent providers.

If he talks about sermorelin again, I’d want him to say up front that the company planning to sell it pays him millions of dollars a year, and then to repeat the cancer-risk warning he gave in 2024.