Mark Cuban has a pitch for hospitals: Manufacture drugs in their own parking lot.
Mr. Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs previously launched a Dallas-based manufacturing facility to address supply issues, starting with epinephrine and norepinephrine production. More recently, Mr. Cuban said his facility can also produce Pitocin, pediatric cancer drugs and sterile water — and that generic tablets can be cheaper when made in Dallas versus purchased from India.
During Becker’s Spring 2026 Chief Pharmacy Officer Summit, Mr. Cuban explained how Cost Plus — which includes pharmacy, contracting, procurement and manufacturing businesses — is “modularizing” its manufacturing facilities.
“We’ve been able to take the manufacturing facility we have in Dallas and not only make it much smaller than what everybody else has done to that point, but we’ve been able to modularize them and put them in a pod that is effectively a tractor trailer,” Mr. Cuban said. “The trailers that go on the back that you see going down the road — we can manufacture sterile injectables in that tractor trailer.”
Cost Plus is selling these manufacturing pods, which can be deployed anywhere from hospital sites to disaster zones to research facilities. He said rare disease therapies that historically cost upward of $500,000 and took six months to produce can now cost roughly $50,000 and possibly take less time.
“That, literally, over the long term, is going to be our biggest business and will save the most lives and money,” he said. “The more efficient we become at using robotics and AI, the less expensive we can manufacture drugs.”
Mr. Cuban added FDA Commissioner Martin Makary, MD, was “all excited” about the pods.
Along with the pods, Mr. Cuban added that Cost Plus Drugs Marketplace — allowing health systems to directly purchase drugs — has produced significant savings for organizations. Cost Plus Drugs Marketplace buys drugs and then marks them up 10% to 12% before selling to hospitals. In 2024, Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems became the first system to partner with the company. Others have followed suit, such as Tacoma, Wash.-based MultiCare Health System, which said it saved $1 million in six months.
“Hospitals are lousy at buying things — sorry, guys. You guys overpay for everything, literally everything. Your GPOs are not very nice people to you, taking their 3%,” he said.
However, even if the economics are sound and a hospital CEO is on board, there is one obstacle to Cost Plus Drugs Marketplace’s expansion.
“The hardest thing we have is getting people in procurement to continue to do business with what would save them money less than what they’re paying with their GPOs,” Mr. Cuban said.
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