Hustle and AI can make for a potent combo. At least that is what Matthew Gallagher, an entrepreneur in the US, is proving. Earlier when Sam Altman said AI would enable one person to run a $1 billion company, it sounded like a distant future. But apparently it is here. Matthew Gallagher, a 41-year-old entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, has managed to create a telehealth company with revenue of over nearly $2 billion by just using AI tools. The company is called Medvi, it sells GLP-1 drugs and while Mathew is the human in charge, several AI tools are doing the heavy lifting for his business.
Medvi, according to a New York Times report, is not a tech company. But it has been built using a lot of AI tech, including vibe coding. Its website has been created by Matthew using AI coding tools. The images on the website have been created using AI. Its marketing material has been created using AI. And even the sale, customer outreach and customer support are handled by AI.
To be specific, the report notes that Mathew vibe coded his company website with ChatGPT, Claude and Grok. For marketing, Midjourney and Runway generated ad creatives, while ElevenLabs powered customer communication. Custom AI agents stitched everything together, and a chatbot handled incoming customer queries.
Mathew, until he brought his brother on board, was the only employee at Medvi, doing everything and hustling in every possible way. The NYT report notes that he even cloned his avatar and voice to ensure he could handle multiple customer meetings at the same time.
Medvi was started in September 2024 with initial funding of $20,000. The company in 2025 reportedly generated $401 million in revenue, serving around 250,000 customers. Now in 2026 it is on its way to generate around $1.8 billion in revenue. So impressive is the journey of Medvi that OpenAI president highlighted it on X. “AI creates new opportunity for entrepreneurs,” he wrote while quoting the report on Medvi.
The secret sauce is not AI
Even as the story of Medvi has created a huge buzz in tech circles there are two aspects of it that are giving people pause. One, it is a classic telehealth company, skirting the law if not breaking it. The premise is that it can help you get expensive prescription drugs far cheaper because it relies on online doctor prescriptions. Over the years, these companies have been a regular feature of American healthcare. Instead of going to a doctor for prescription, a customer calls a number or “consults” with a doctor online, who then helps arrange the prescription drug at a far cheaper rate.
In particular, drugs that fall in the category of lifestyle medicines, such as hair-loss reversal drugs or drugs related to sexual health, are often the big money makers for telehealth companies. Medvi, meanwhile, is riding the GLP-1 wave. GLP-1 drugs, such as Ozempic, are prescription drugs for illnesses like diabetes and obesity. But so efficient are these drugs at weight loss that a lot of wealthy people are popping them left, right, and centre.
In the US such drugs usually cost upwards of $1000. But Medvi is apparently selling them for around $300. This has allowed the company to grow extremely fast as hundreds of thousands of people try to get GLP-1 drugs for weight loss without going to the actual clinic and doctor.
Some people have highlighted that not only Medvi has ridden the craze for GLP-1, but it might have also navigated its way around regulations. One such person is Sheel Mohnot, a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. He hints that what Medvi is doing is likely illegal “They have (over) 800 ads running right now from fake doctors (and another 4,000 running with fake testimonials and from fake organisations),” he wrote on X. “This is highly illegal (using an AI generated doctor image and quote). The same quote is being used by hundreds of doctors (who are not real).”
Mohnot also highlights that Medvi received a warning letter from American regulators in February. In other words, AI might have been used to create Medvi, a $1 billion company, but it also might have been used disingenuously.
