Supplement brand Athletic Greens has raised $115 million in a round led by Alpha Wave Ventures that pushes its valuation past the $1 billion mark.
The investors joining Alibaba and Atai Life Sciences backer Alpha Wave Ventures in the round include Schmidt’s Naturals founder Jaime Schmidt, Thinx co-founder Miki Agrawal, WNBA star Chiney Ogwumike and AF Ventures operating partner Swan Sit, a former executive at Nike, Revlon and Estée Lauder. In July last year, Athletic Greens raised its first external investment round for an undisclosed amount. Among the investors from the previous round returning for the latest round are SC.Holdings, Bolt Ventures and Dr. Peter Attia.
“I want to do this with people that I really like and [who] believe in what we are doing,” says Athletic Greens founder and CEO Chris Ashenden. “All of our investors [in our first round] were AG1 customers and all of our investors now are AG1 customers.”
Established in 2010, Athletic Greens bootstrapped to reach more than $150 million in revenues. The cash infusion will help the brand grow the subscriber base for its marquee product, AG1, through increased digital and offline distribution, and geographic expansion. It will be put toward boosting production capabilities, scientific research and innovation as well.
Athletic Greens is dedicated to constantly improving AG1, a daily powdered nutrition drink Ashenden says replaces nine other wellness products thanks to its 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotic, whole food and adaptogenic ingredients. It’s endured 52 iterations so far, and the 53rd is right around the corner. The supplement is $99 for a one-time purchase and $79 on a monthly subscription basis plus $9 for shipping.
“I’m so proud of how we consistently, with a potent focus on innovation iteration, continue to disrupt our own product to drive more value back to our customers to have more impact,” says Ashenden. “I had learnings around go-to market that I had, to some extent, over-engineered the product, not in the sense that I’d put too much in and then it wasn’t valuable, but I’d put a lot more in that was currently being asked for by the market. I was determined not to hack this product down. I’ve always been focused on quality.”
Athletic Greens’ employees are spread across North America, Europe, China and New Zealand, and have been fully remote since the company’s founding. Ashenden expects to triple Athletic Greens’ workforce in 2022. Last month, Beauty Independent reported on the brand bringing on Kat Cole, ex-COO and president of Focus Brands, parent company of Cinnabon, Auntie Anne’s, Moe’s and Carvel, as president and COO. She’s guiding Athletic Greens’ offline expansion efforts and web3 initiatives.
Athletic Greens has relied on strategic partnerships with health and fitness influencers to spread the word about its product. “It’s not the influencer with the hot abs who people just follow because they look great. People follow them for vision. How are they living their life?” says Ashenden. “This continual drive towards self-improvement is a commonality for both our brand, our product, me the CEO, and for every one of our amazing customers on their own life journey. We applied that to the product and also to how these thought leaders can share their message.”
The pandemic has made greater numbers of people open to that message. Ashenden says they’re taking a lifestyle approach to how they embrace what he calls “health ownership.” He elaborates, “People want to be healthier, happier and have a more spectacular life. They want to be aligned with brands that they trust have quality. They feel on a mission, and we happen to have a business that is directly in the middle of all of those trends.”
Originally from New Zealand, Ashenden, a health and fitness expert, investor and serial entrepreneur, created Athletic Greens after years of struggling with his health. Despite adhering to what he thought was a proper routine of food plus supplementation, he was chronically sick. A stay at a tony health clinic where he rang up a $35,000 bill on every blood, stool, saliva and urine test available, and was placed on a $100 a day supplement regimen sparked a discovery that his health woes stemmed from a lack of nutrient absorption.
“I came away from that experience with two things,” says Ashenden. “One, most of what we think we know about nutrition is wrong. Particularly back then, we were really missing a gut health piece, and then, two, there’s got to be a better way than this way. I got together some of the smartest minds I could and collated their best ideas on how to put it all together.” The result was the initial iteration of AG1.
Athletic Greens’ raise is one of the biggest in the wellness segment of late, but the supplements space has been busy with mergers and acquisitions. Buyers and investors are keen to jump into a global supplements market that Fortune Business Insights predicts will advance at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 8.7% to go from $61.2 billion in 2020 sales to $128.64 billion in sales by 2028. Examples of supplement company investments and acquisitions include The Nue Co.’s $25 million series B round led by Pamoja Capital that was revealed in July last year, and Nestlé completing the purchase of The Bountiful Company for $5.75 billion a month later.
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