AG1 CEO Kat Cole on hitting 10,000 retail doors, launching AG1 Pro, and using AI agents to keep OpEx flat as revenue scales

AG1 CEO Kat Cole on retail expansion, AI-driven ops, and the science-as-marketing thesis

AG1 is approaching ~10,000 brick-and-mortar doors by end of 2026, adding Walmart, Kroger, and Harris Teeter to an existing footprint that already includes Costco and Target. For a brand that operated as a pure D2C subscription business for its first fifteen years, the retail push is the defining operational story of this moment.

New product launches

Two products are driving the portfolio expansion. AG1 Pro, formulated with creatine and HMB for gut and muscle support, has sold out repeatedly since launch. Cole attributes the demand to two converging trends: the GLP-1 wave pulling consumers toward gut and muscle health, and the broader longevity movement drawing both men and women across age groups. The second launch is an NSF for Sport-certified gummy, which Cole positions on label transparency and third-party certification — a direct contrast to the co-manufacturer-driven, claim-light products that dominate the supplement shelf.

“We continue our march from Costco and Target into Walmart, Kroger, and Harris Teeter. We'll be at almost 10,000 doors, brick and mortar retail by the end of this year. The science is the marketing. The science is the search result and that drives pull through to multiple channels.”

Science as search result

The more consequential shift Cole describes is structural. AG1 has invested in peer-reviewed, placebo-controlled human clinical trials over roughly five years, and that scientific record is now generating commercial returns in agentic search that marketing spend alone cannot replicate. Consumers searching for gut health or multivitamin products with documented clinical research are surfacing AG1 without paid placement — a dynamic Cole explicitly frames as "the science is the marketing." Retailers are paying attention. Cole says major retail partners are citing agentic search demand as a signal they actively look for in brands they carry, referencing it in their own earnings calls.

The flip side is that this only works if a brand has published evidence. Cole's read on the supplement category broadly is that most brands don't — the product exists, the landing page exists, but the underlying substance doesn't survive five follow-up questions.

AI across operations

AG1 started deploying agentic tools roughly 2.5 years ago, beginning with customer service and moving into supply chain traceability and ingredient sourcing. A partnership with UC Davis uses AI to model ingredient interactions and inform more complex future formulations. Cole's thesis is straightforward: every dollar saved on overhead is a dollar available for product innovation, clinical research, and demand generation.

On customer service quality, Cole is candid about where the tools work and where they don't. For a subscription-heavy D2C business, the majority of customer interactions are transactional — order status, shipping, account changes — and those have responded well to agentic handling, with customer satisfaction scores improving. AG1 has drawn a hard line at nutrition and health questions, where interactions escalate to humans. Cole argues the tools aren't ready at scale for that territory, and the success in the transactional layer reflects the decision not to overreach.

OpEx trajectory

Cole expects OpEx to be flat to down in absolute terms even as revenue scales. The mechanism is two-sided: AI tools reduce the cost of existing functions, and the efficiency gains redeploy into marketing, research, and customer experience rather than headcount growth. As the channel mix shifts toward retail — where the customer relationship is more fragmented across a 7-count Walmart SKU, a 40-count Costco pack, and full-access subscribers — Cole reframes "customer service" as customer retention infrastructure. The savings from automating transactional support get reinvested into loyalty programs, membership benefits, and education tools, with the goal of keeping customers on their routines across whichever channel they're buying through.

The operating leverage bet, in short, is that AG1 can hold its cost structure roughly flat while distribution and revenue scale significantly — and the clinical investment made over the past five years is now pulling its weight on both the retail shelf and in the search result.