Hey, startup founder–why aren’t YOU building a $1.8 billion revenue company with AI and just you (and your brother)? In 14 months? On $20,000? Last week’s glowfest articles about Medvi in the Old Gray Lady NY Times (where you don’t expect it) went viral. The coverage would make the average tech bro founder feel just a little bit small. The private two-person company reported to the NYT that they earned $401 million in revenue in 2025, its first full calendar year, from 250,000 customers and made a 16.2% net profit, or $65 million, and now is supposedly on track (the old “run rate”) to make $1.8 billion in 2026. To compare to giant Hims, a public company built the old-fashioned way, that’s more than half Hims’ 2025 revenue. Medvi has not borrowed and has no investors, thus no external valuation.

It’s a simple marketing model selling e-prescriptions for GLP-1 weight loss, peptides and other longevity meds, others for specialized men’s and women’s health such as hormone balance and hair health, and prepackaged meals to go. Medvi runs the website, the checkout, and the customer relationship including service. All the sticky stuff, such as licensed physicians to prescribe, prescription processing, pharmacy fulfillment, shipping logistics, and regulatory compliance, are outsourced to OpenLoop Health (telehealth) and CareValidate (virtual care management and med fulfillment (plus presumably a meal supplier). AI tools wrote the website code and copy, the ever-popular ElevenLabs for customer facing voice tools, chatbots for customer inquiries, AI agents to connect all the systems…a veritable proof positive of the vision of Sam Altman of OpenAI on what he believes will be the Future of Business Without Workers, Only Customers. Winning Altman’s bet of the first billion dollar AI-built company, in fact.

AI handling most of the work, designed by founder/CEO Matthew Gallagher, who had to bring in his brother because it took off so fast. Outsourcing to known telehealth/telemedicine suppliers. All he did was the marketing and selling. A veritable genius in pulling this all together–then getting an article in the NYT that any PR person or marketing director would ‘kill’ for? What could be wrong? 

Other media dug into the pretty picture, doing the work the NYT wouldn’t do. The chatbots initially hallucinated pricing and products for customers. It sent links to customers confirming intake forms that with a minor digit change in the sequential integer at the end, accessed other people’s records–a significant breach of HIPAA that was solved between the discoverer and an assistant at Medvi–but apparently never reported to HHS’ Office of Civil Rights as required. Medvi received one of those charming warning letters from the FDA in February about their website depicting GLP-1 injectables with their name on the syringe (still there) as well as featuring compounded weight loss and other meds as ‘FDA-approved’–yes, those compounded GLP-1’s no longer permitted for well over a year, and in any case, not approved. [TTA 12 Mar]. There is no record on the FDA website of a response (required within 15 working days) to the FDA letter. OpenLoop itself had a January data breach affecting 1.6 million patient records and is facing a class action lawsuit on compounded oral tirzepatide manufactured by Triad Rx–and sold by Medvi. Oh yes, there are faked up before-and-after pictures on the website of customers.

Even more blatant is its use of extensive affiliate marketing featuring deepfaked doctor pictures and personas talking up Medvi–5,000 ad campaigns reported by Meta in their library last week, according to Business Insider/MSN. The doctors quoted either did not exist or linked to stores in Angola. They used AI-generated video testimonials and recycled identical scripts across multiple fabricated doctors. Mr. Gallagher told the online outlet in an email that “maybe 30%” of its advertising was through affiliates”. 

AI slop. And the Times fell for it!

This Editor predicts that based on the multiple articles read on background for this article, that the laundry list of problems goes on much longer than this. Medvi will either hire a cleanup crew, go forth and sin no more, or shut the doors in a hail of litigation. Each one of them has its own spin worth reading: Forbes (surprisingly), Drug Discovery & Trends,  Techdirt (!–particularly tart), Futurism, Moneywise, LinkedIn. Mr. Gallagher better hold on the Lamborghini and start putting a significant part of that gusher of cash aside for a compliance expert and some good attorneys.