AG1

AG1's go-to-market strategy was built on a structural insight: the most trusted voices in the health and wellness space — physicians, scientists, podcasters — have audiences that trust their recommendations implicitly. If those voices hold equity in a product, they have a financial interest in the product's success. If they are simultaneously paid sponsors, that interest is compounded. If neither the equity relationship nor the sponsorship fees are disclosed at point of endorsement, the listener has no way to distinguish scientific recommendation from commercial transaction.

This is not an unusual situation in consumer marketing. It is, however, an unusually pure form of the problem — because the endorsers are specifically physicians and scientists whose authority derives from the perception of disinterest. Peter Attia's brand is built on the premise that he applies the same evidence standard to supplements as he does to pharmaceuticals. Andrew Huberman's brand is built on the credibility of Stanford neuroscience. Tim Ferriss's brand is built on rigorous personal experimentation. In each case, AG1 purchased both the financial relationship and the benefit of that trust.

Chris Ashenden built AG1 on a specific brand of personal authenticity: the reformed athlete who discovered foundational nutrition and built a company around sharing it with the world. The origin story, repeated in countless interviews, positioned him as a mission-driven entrepreneur whose product reflected his personal commitment to health optimization.

In July 2024, Newsroom New Zealand published the results of an eighteen-month investigation. Ashenden had been convicted in 2011 of 43 breaches of the NZ Fair Trading Act for operating rent-to-buy property schemes that took deposits from financially vulnerable people, gave them the impression they were acquiring homes, and did not transfer title. An Auckland District Court judge described the offending as containing "strong elements of cynicism and the calculated exploitation of people struggling financially."

Ashenden had fled New Zealand after the convictions, rebuilt in Australia and then the US, and built a $1.2 billion company without disclosing this history to his board, his institutional investors, or his subscriber base. He had hired legal representation to suppress the story before it went public. AG1 had denied the criminal charges were criminal in nature — an assertion NZ journalists documented as factually false.

AG1 contains 75 ingredients organized into multiple proprietary blend categories. The FDA requires only that each ingredient in a proprietary blend be listed by name, and that the total weight of the blend be disclosed. Individual doses within blends do not need to be disclosed. AG1 takes full advantage of this.

The practical consequence: a physician cannot assess whether the dose of any individual adaptogen, herbal extract, or probiotic strain is at a clinically relevant level. A consumer paying $79/month cannot know if they are receiving a therapeutic dose of ashwagandha or a trace. A dietitian who criticized this practice used the term "pixie dusting" — the inclusion of impressive-sounding ingredients in sub-therapeutic quantities solely for label marketing purposes.

AG1 explicitly markets the formula as "science-backed." The NSF Certified for Sport certification confirms purity and label accuracy — meaning the listed ingredients are present. It does not confirm that any ingredient is present at a dose with demonstrated clinical effect.

The physician problem is specific: AG1 markets aggressively to a medically literate audience through doctors like Attia. When a physician recommends a supplement, patients reasonably assume the physician has reviewed the ingredient doses against clinical evidence. With AG1, that review is structurally impossible — the dose data does not exist in the public label. A physician recommending AG1 is, in effect, recommending a formula they cannot evaluate. If that physician also holds equity in the company, the conflict is complete.

AG1's Next Gen reformulation in 2025 added ingredients and committed to future clinical research. The company has pledged $20M in research investment over three years. This is a genuine step toward the scientific backing the marketing claims. It does not change the current state: no published independent trial on the complete formula, and 49 of 75 doses still undisclosed.

NSF Certified for Sport is a real and meaningful certification. It is sought by professional athletes, required by some sporting organizations, and represents a genuine third-party audit of manufacturing quality. In the Traced framework, it is the only dimension on which AG1 avoids a red score.

What NSF Certified for Sport confirms: the product contains what the label says it contains; no banned athletic substances are present; the manufacturing facility meets Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards; batch testing is conducted.

What NSF Certified for Sport does not confirm: that any ingredient is present at a clinically effective dose; that any health claim is valid; that the product does the things AG1 says it does; that the formula has been independently tested for efficacy.

AG1's marketing systematically presents NSF certification as evidence of scientific rigor. The certification is invoked in the same sentence as "science-backed" and "clinically studied." These are separate claims. A product can be NSF certified and contain 49 undisclosed ingredient doses in sub-therapeutic quantities. A product can be NSF certified and have no published clinical trial on its complete formula. AG1 is both.

Kat Cole became CEO in July 2024, three years after joining as President and COO. She is a more conventional executive than Ashenden: Focus Brands background (Cinnabon, Jamba Juice, Auntie Anne's), operational expertise, investor in early-stage health companies. She has no criminal history. Her public positioning on AG1 is grounded in consumer benefit rather than founder mythology.

Under Cole, the company has: launched AG1 Next Gen with upgraded methylated B complex, added vitamins and minerals, and five new clinically studied probiotic strains; committed $20M to clinical research over three years; expanded into retail (Vitamin Shoppe, Starbucks tests, airport vending); added new product lines including sleep supplements; and hired a Chief Science and Nutrition Officer (Dr. Ralph Esposito) in 2025.

What has not changed: the proprietary blend structure remains. The 49 hidden doses remain. No independent peer-reviewed trial on the complete formula has been published. The endorser network — Huberman, Rogan, Fridman — remains in place. The Cayman Islands corporate structure through which the company operates has not changed. Ashenden remains on the board.

The Kat Cole era is a genuine improvement in corporate governance credibility and research investment intent. It does not address the structural transparency problems that define AG1's position in the Traced framework. A reformed management team does not un-hide 49 ingredient doses or un-create the investor-endorser conflict that built the subscriber base.

AG1 is not the worst product in the supplement category. The formula is not dangerous. The ingredients are not fraudulent. NSF certification is real. The company is not selling something that will harm the people taking it.

What makes AG1 the definitive case study is the precision with which it exploits every structural gap in the supplement regulatory framework simultaneously. Proprietary blends allow ingredient opacity. The FDA does not require clinical trials for supplements. The FTC's endorsement disclosure rules have significant enforcement gaps in the podcasting context. New Zealand's criminal conviction suppression law (convictions concealed after 7 years) allowed a fraudulent founder to present a false personal narrative. The US's general openness to business reinvention enabled the rest.

AG1 did not create these gaps. But it built a $600M business by navigating all of them at once — proprietary blends to prevent formula evaluation, influencer equity to manufacture trust, founder mythology to substitute for clinical evidence, and NSF certification to provide a plausible third-party credibility signal.

The platform that Kat Cole is now building — retail expansion, product diversification, genuine research investment — may eventually produce the evidence base AG1's marketing has always claimed. If it does, and if the proprietary blend opacity is reduced, the Traced score will update. Those conditions have not been met. The score remains red.