AG1’s green with envy over the gummy-ification of wellness

AG1’s green with envy over the gummy-ification of wellness

Don’t get AG1 CEO Kat Cole started on the science of gummies. “You can’t put AG1, as it is, in a gummy,” she tells me when we speak in mid-May.

Launched in 2010, AG1 (previously Athletic Greens) is best known for its all-in-one nutritional supplement, a drink-your-greens powder with hints of vanilla and pineapple. AG1 became a defining brand of the early wellness era as it helped bring supplements, now an industry worth $70 billion, into the mainstream.

AG1 packed nutrition into a single scoop of powder, poured millions of dollars into research, and leaned on a prominent roster of science-y wellness influencers to promote the product. At the brand’s peak growth, everyone from Olympian Allyson Felix to NYU professor Scott Galloway to podcasting neuroscientist Andrew Huberman (also an investor in AG1) was flacking for the company. 

The business formula worked, as those podcast listeners converted into subscribers with a daily AG1 habit. At this point, some people have subscribed to AG1’s monthly powder shipments for more than a decade. The company reported $600 million in 2024 sales. (Below, I’ll tell you what Cole has to say about its most recent financial performance.)

Lately, though, the world around AG1 has shifted. Wellness is entering a new, “treat yourself” era, with candy-like gummy supplements exploding on social media and flying off store shelves. Olly, Goli, Lemme, Arrae, BelliWelli, Troomy, Create: The list of brands goes on. Grüns, known for its bear-shaped “superfoods greens gummies,” launched in 2023, quickly rocketed to success, and sold to Unilever in April for a reported $1.2 billion. 

Gummies may be all the rage, but AG1 has held fast to its foundation.

Cole, who joined the company in 2021 as president and COO and took the helm at the wellness pioneer in 2024, says AG1’s philosophy is to “follow the science.”And she’s adamant that path does not lead to gummies.Which sets up an innovator’s dilemma, as the industry stalwart faces the upstarts behind the $27.5 billion gummy-ification of wellness. AG1 created the greens wave, but is being rocked by the new gummy one.Read on and you’ll learn:

Cole’s full critique of the gummy format for getting your daily nutrition

How Grüns CEO Chad Janis’s repositions the debate—and where he admits Cole’s right

AG1’s unlikely allies against the gummy incursion

What AG1 is doing to compete against its rivals

A bear market

In early online ads, Grüns explicitly positioned itself as “Less expensive than AG1 and much easier to take.” Green powders, the ad said, “taste like dirt.” Another Grüns ad asked “Pills or Gummies? The Choice is Easy.” Why experience the morning friction of mixing a powder or popping a pill, the ads suggest, when you can enjoy a gummy packet on the go? 

And there’s no need to compromise when it comes to nutritional efficacy, gummy startups say. They assert that new, sophisticated manufacturing techniques make the good-for-you treats a viable delivery mechanism for vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, prebiotics, and more. 

They also note that consumers are less likely to give up on a gummy than a powder or pill because of the taste and ease. What good is all that painstaking scientific testing that AG1 has undertaken if consumers can’t make its powder a daily habit? 

“There are tons of amazing supplements out there that one can find benefits from,” says Grüns founder and CEO Chad Janis. “But [Grüns] is probably the first supplement that I have had, and that millions of customers have had, that they actually look forward to. They go to bed at night thinking, I cannot wait to have Grüns tomorrow.”

Making nutrition “fun and enjoyable,” Janis argues, turns a product like Grüns into a “health catalyst.” (And a lower-cost subscription to boot—with current promotions, a monthly supply costs $40, versus AG1’s $79.) 

The company Janis founded in his Stanford Business School dorm room took just 24 months to hit $300 million in revenue on an annualized basis, and now ships more than 10 million gummies daily. Unlike AG1, which was slow to embrace retail, Janis is happy to make Grüns available anywhere and everywhere, from Walmart to Sprouts. 

In May, Grüns unveiled its latest limited-edition flavor: Popsicle Firecracker, a collaboration with the childhood throwback. For Janis, collabs introduce variety and help combat habit fatigue. Overall, the U.S. gummy market is now worth $12.8 billion, according to Future Market Insights. 

AG1, by contrast, won over early wellness adopters by radically simplifying aspirational wellness—and injecting it with a sense of scientific rigor. Instead of navigating crowded vitamin aisles, clean girls and optimizer bros could simply subscribe to AG1’s all-in-one formula and trust the company to do its homework on ingredients and their efficacy. 

Cole doesn’t object to the gummy’s playful format, per se. It’s the efficacy that she worries about. With a gummy, she says, the probiotics in AG1’s hero product would “not survive the heat” involved in manufacturing. Plus, there’s the problem of nutrient density: To approximate a single-serving scoop of AG1 powder, “the amount of ingredients would be something like a 15-gummy serving, which is not tenable for the average person.”

Cole says she is confident AG1 can compete with the new entrants, especially as consumers grow increasingly sophisticated when it comes to discerning quality and evaluating marketing claims. AG1 has “tripled” in size since she joined the company, and is “consistently profitable,” she adds. 

AG1 says it’s profitable, but declined Fast Company’s request to release its 2025 financial results. In April, Reuters reported that the company was shopping itself to prospective buyers at a $2 billion-plus valuation. 

But there are laboratory truths, and then there are human truths: The supplements market is growing because the wellness it promises no longer feels like a chore. Can an austere brand like AG1 find a way to combine duty with delight?

The absorption game

The idea of the humble but tasty gummy as a nutritional vehicle started with fruit snacks. Manufacturers began adding ingredients like vitamin C to the after-school staple, using the same logic that produced fortified breakfast cereals. It didn’t take long for parents to start nabbing their kids’ snacks, and later for the concept to blossom into a category of its own. There are now melatonin and mushroom gummies for sleep, creatine gummies for muscle mass, fiber gummies for gut health, and multivitamin gummies for everything else. 

Food companies, like plant-based meal delivery company Sakara, are now branching into the burgeoning category. Sakara launched a “Serene State” gummy for stress relief and a “Metabolism Bite” to support weight management. Telehealth companies, including women’s health-focused Midi, are introducing supplement stores to complement their virtual consultation services. Beauty companies are hopping on the trend, too; Neutrogena, for example, sells gummies for skin hydration and clear complexion. 

AG1 hasn’t tried to cash in on the trend. Stubborn incumbents resist changes in consumer preferences at their peril, says Chuck Cotter, a partner focused on consumer products at law firm Morrison Foerster, which advised Grüns on its sale to Unilever. 

“If consumers are saying they want a different form factor and you’re refusing to provide it, I think you’re losing the opportunity that you have when it comes to the brand strength and credibility you already possess,” he says. 

The view that gummies sacrifice quality for convenience is outdated, Janis argues, noting, “I love the gummy format. I think it’s this perfect balance of playful, approachable, but frankly, delivering really serious nutrition these days. You can substitute all the ingredients that gave gummies a bad name 10 years ago, with gummy fillers and sugars and stuff like that, and make gummies with real food.” 

Janis acknowledges that there are some ingredients that degrade in the gummy cooking process, either due to heat or exposure to liquid. Grüns gummies don’t contain creatine, for example, which is best delivered in powder form.

Janis has also invested in studying degradation over the course of the shelf life of Grüns in an effort to make gummies “a reputable format.” (All supplements eventually degrade, but powders have traditionally been the most shelf-stable.) 

The pills and powders crowd remains unmoved. Ritual, maker of a bestselling prenatal vitamin in capsule form, positions itself as a leader in ingredient transparency. In a podcast conversation this month with CPG-focused publication Express Checkout, Mastaneh Sharafi, Ritual’s SVP of science and innovation, did not mince words. “Foreign materials” are sometimes found in gummies, she said. “On the efficacy side of it, it’s hard for some nutrients, for bacterias, to survive in the gummy matrix.” 

Ritual, Sharafi noted, doesn’t just make pills; it has engineered its product with delayed release mechanisms so that nutrients are properly absorbed in the intestine, rather than in the stomach. “I don’t think you can achieve it with gummies.” 

Science-focused super fans

If Grüns is selling fun, AG1 is selling the satisfaction of doing your research. The supplements category is only lightly regulated, which means that companies can make dubious claims without serious consequences. 

“You look on a lot of these supplement websites and bottles, they all type the words third-party certified,” AG1’s Cole says. “They all type the word high quality. It is dangerously easy to type those words. But what is the evidence?”

In her view, AG1 benefits from consumers’ growing knowledge—and skepticism. “The consumer is just advancing,” she says. “The consumer is growing in their frustration with the category and growing with their sophistication. They’re doing their research. They have ChatGPT. They have tools to ask, ‘How do I know this works?’”

Skepticism can also be directed at AG1, however. In 2024, longevity influencer Bryan Johnson attacked AG1 on YouTube, labeling the company a failure. He doubled down in January of this year, going so far as to argue that “AG1 is bad for the world” because it lures people in with false promises. (Johnson, of course, sells competing supplements under his Blueprint brand.) 

AG1 is on its 53rd iteration; every update, Cole says, has been carefully vetted. Upgrades over the past several years include additional probiotics and an improved prebiotic fiber profile. “Most importantly, we spent two years backing that upgrade of the formulation by four double-blind, placebo-controlled human trials,” she says. 

The challenge with using science as a competitive moat is that it locks AG1 into a particular model. AG1’s longtime subscribers appreciate this investment in research and product consistency, and pull in new subscribers: Word of mouth is AG1’s biggest marketing channel. 

But these AG-1 superfans also limit the company’s ability to innovate. “These are people who drink this daily,” Cole says. “So any slight change, natural variation, formulation upgrade, is actually a big deal.” 

Grüns is pursuing software-style growth. AG1 has to think about protecting its base. “I think about, with our customers, What would cause a customer of a few years to leave?” Cole says. Despite introducing new flavors, “a majority of our customers prefer AG1’s original flavor.” The core formula, in other words, has to stay constant. 

Even so, 2025 marked a shift for AG1. Once entirely direct-to-consumer, AG1 made a big move into retail, with partners including Amazon and Costco. Target followed in April, and Ulta Beauty this month. (Like Grüns, AG1 is suddenly everywhere.)

AG1 also introduced its first custom product blend in years: AGZ, a powder designed to support sleep. It contains alkalized cocoa, apigenin from chamomile, coconut milk, holy basil, lavender, and more. Instead of AG1’s signature original flavor, AGZ comes in chocolate, chocolate mint, and berry. 

“Part of our evolution as a brand is to meet people where they are at different life stages,” Cole says. 

As long as that stage isn’t their gummy era.