AG1

AG1 is the flagship product of Athletic Greens International, privately held, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. The company was founded in 2010 by New Zealand entrepreneur Chris Ashenden. In 2022, it raised a $115 million Series A from private equity at a reported valuation of approximately $1.2 billion — an unusually large single round for a consumer supplement brand with no public institutional presence.

The identities of the Series A investors have not been fully disclosed. AG1 confirmed the round through a press release but did not name all participating investors. This opacity is relevant because equity holders at this valuation include parties with direct financial incentives tied to consumer purchasing behavior — and some of those parties also serve as the primary voices recommending the product to consumers.

In 2024, founder and CEO Chris Ashenden stepped down. The company appointed Kat Cole — former COO of Focus Brands, operator of Cinnabon and Jamba Juice — as CEO. This transition from founder-led to PE-aligned professional management is a standard inflection point in the extraction timeline of DTC health brands.

This is the dimension that defines AG1's place in the Traced framework. The investor-endorser conflict is not incidental to the AG1 business model — it is the business model. The company was built from the beginning around a strategy of acquiring equity relationships with high-trust health influencers, then deploying them as paid sponsors simultaneously.

The core conflict: when a person holds equity in a company while also receiving payment to endorse its products, their financial interest is not to provide independent analysis — it is to maximize listener conversion and subscriber retention. Every subscription signup increases both their sponsorship fee and the value of their equity stake. The recommendation has two revenue streams. The listener has no way to know which one is primary.

The key relationships, as documented:

The FTC's 2009 guidelines on endorsements require disclosure of material connections between endorsers and the companies they recommend — including equity ownership. The question of whether equity relationships are adequately disclosed by the word "sponsor" at the top of a podcast episode is an open regulatory question. AG1's influencer relationships test the edges of these rules in ways that regulators have not yet resolved.

It is also worth noting the contrast with how the supplement industry's best actors handle this dimension. Momentous publishes individual batch certificates of analysis — lot-specific test results a consumer can look up for the exact product they purchased. AG1's NSF certification, while meaningful, provides periodic audits rather than publicly available per-batch COAs. The structural question of whether a product's advisors have financial interests that shape their recommendations remains unresolved regardless of certification status.

AG1's primary revenue mechanism is a subscription at $79/month — approximately $948/year. This can also be purchased as a one-time supply, but the brand's pricing architecture, its DTC funnel, and its influencer messaging all push strongly toward auto-renewing subscription.

The subscription model matters to Traced's framework for a specific reason: it creates a structural incentive misalignment between what is best for the consumer and what is best for the company. A consumer who realizes after two months that AG1 is not providing meaningful benefit they couldn't get from a cheaper stack or from diet changes should cancel. The subscription model's entire purpose is to create friction against that decision — through auto-renewal, through cancellation flows, through framing monthly delivery as a health "commitment" rather than a purchase.

AG1 also regularly sells subscription bundles that include shaker bottles, travel packs, and added supplements (Vitamin D, Omega-3, probiotic) at escalating price tiers. A consumer who starts at $79/month is routinely upsold toward $150+/month through in-app and post-purchase flows. The supplement stack upsell is marketed as the completion of a "foundation," not as an add-on.

AG1 contains 75 ingredients organized into seven proprietary blend categories. The label lists every ingredient, which satisfies FDA disclosure requirements. The label does not disclose the dose of any individual ingredient within a blend — which is legal for proprietary formulas and is the central transparency failure.

Why individual doses matter: many of AG1's ingredients have demonstrated efficacy at specific clinical doses established in peer-reviewed literature. Ashwagandha reduces cortisol in studies using 300–600mg. Rhodiola improves endurance in studies using 200–680mg. Lactobacillus acidophilus provides gut benefit at 10 billion CFU. AG1 contains all three. The label does not tell you whether each ingredient is present at a therapeutic dose, a sub-therapeutic dose, or a trace amount added for label legitimacy.

This practice — including an ingredient at a sub-clinical amount so it can be listed on the label — is industry-standard in supplement manufacturing. It has a name: pixie dusting. It is not illegal. It is not disclosed.

The NOVA classification for AG1 is Class 4: ultra-processed. This is not a meaningful category failure in the supplement context — it simply reflects the industrial processing required to create a fine, stable, blended powder. It does not independently indicate that AG1 is harmful. What it does indicate is that AG1 is not a "food" in any meaningful sense, despite frequent marketing language that frames it as a nutritional foundation equivalent to eating vegetables.

AG1 does not have a single published, peer-reviewed, placebo-controlled clinical trial evaluating the product as formulated. This is not unusual in the supplement industry — the FDA does not require pre-market efficacy trials for supplements. It is, however, in direct tension with the clinical authority of the voices promoting the product.

When Andrew Huberman, a Stanford-affiliated neuroscientist, discusses AG1 in the context of his scientific credibility and his discussions of peer-reviewed research on nutrition and performance, the listener's prior is that the recommendation is evidence-based. The product has no such evidence base. The ingredients, individually, have varying levels of research support. The product, as a specific formulation at its specific undisclosed doses, has none.

AG1 has published an internal "AG1 Science" document and maintains a blog with references to research. These references cite studies on individual ingredients at doses that may or may not match what AG1 contains. This is distinct from evidence for AG1 itself and should not be confused with it.

AG1's label and marketing make the following core claims: supports gut health, supports immune function, supports energy levels, supports hormonal health, and improves performance and recovery. All are structure-function claims.

Under FDA rules, supplement manufacturers may make structure-function claims — statements about how a nutrient or ingredient affects the body — without pre-market FDA approval, provided the claims are truthful and not misleading. The manufacturer must notify the FDA within 30 days of first marketing and include the disclaimer "This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."

AG1's claims are legal. They are also, in the absence of clinical trials on AG1 as formulated, unsubstantiated in the scientific sense. The claims are not lies — individual ingredients have research support at appropriate doses. The claims create an implication of evidence-based validation in the context of influencer health content. The individual ingredients have research support; the product as formulated has not been the subject of published clinical trials.

The gap Traced surfaces here: AG1's claims are the minimum legal standard. Momentous Protein's claims are backed by NSF Certified for Sport testing, published third-party batch results, and advisors with disclosed relationships. Both are legal. They are not equivalent.

AG1 is NSF Certified for Sport, meaning the product has been tested for banned substances and verified to contain what the label states in the aggregate. This is meaningful for competitive athletes. It is a floor for ingredient presence, not a ceiling for efficacy or appropriate dosing.

The safety transparency red score is driven by the proprietary blend structure. Without knowing individual ingredient doses, a consumer cannot assess:

Interaction risks: AG1 contains vitamin K2, which can interact with warfarin and other anticoagulants. It contains ashwagandha, which should be used cautiously in thyroid conditions. The undisclosed doses make medical assessment of interaction risk impossible for a physician reviewing a patient's supplement stack.

Cumulative excess risk: AG1 provides 420mg of Vitamin C, 15mg of zinc, and 100mcg of Vitamin K2, among other micronutrients. These are above-average doses. A consumer who takes AG1 alongside a multivitamin and dietary zinc sources may approach or exceed tolerable upper limits for certain nutrients. Without knowing doses of every ingredient, this cannot be fully assessed.

Batch transparency: Unlike Momentous, AG1 does not publish individual batch test results. NSF certification provides periodic product audits, not publicly available per-batch certificates of analysis. A consumer cannot verify lot-specific composition or look up the actual test results for the specific pouch they received.