Medvi, glorified by the NYT as a two-employee startup with $1B+ in revenue, is a warning about how AI can be misused for shady business and marketing practices
AI isn't the only thing behind Medvi — On Thursday, The New York Times published a thing — and it went viral, declared as a victory for AI:
Marcus on AIGary Marcus
Context & Ripple Effects
Medvi’s earlier coverage framed it as an extreme “tiny team” example: a telehealth operator using more than a dozen AI tools while reporting rapid sales growth. This follow-up shifts attention from operational leverage to the claims and marketing practices that can sit behind a viral AI-success narrative.
The scrutiny also echoes earlier warnings that businesses can overstate what AI is doing and thereby distort how customers, investors, and policymakers assess it. In a regulated consumer service such as telehealth, that gap matters more than it would for a routine back-office automation story.
First-order effects
Medvi and the New York Times’ viral portrayal face closer scrutiny over whether a two-employee, AI-enabled operating model is being presented without sufficient attention to its business and marketing practices.
Prospective customers and partners have a clearer reason to distinguish AI-assisted operational scale from the quality, transparency, and legitimacy of the underlying service.
Second-order effects
Other AI-enabled telehealth and consumer-health businesses may face tougher diligence on advertising, staffing, and the real role of automation, rather than benefiting solely from “tiny team” growth comparisons.
Publishers and investors amplifying AI efficiency stories have incentive to test the claims behind them; Medvi’s AI-enabled two-person scale-up shows how quickly an operational anecdote can become a broader market signal.
Third-order effects
If similar cases accumulate, AI will be treated less as a standalone proof of startup quality and more as an amplifier of existing incentives—making governance of customer acquisition, disclosures, and accountability central to the valuation of lean AI businesses.
The durable divide may be between firms using AI to reduce legitimate operating costs and firms using it to make opaque marketing or thin oversight scale faster; the latter could invite stronger sector-specific scrutiny, particularly where consumers make health-related purchases.
The trend: AI is enabling smaller teams to reach consumer markets at unusual speed, while shifting the central question from headcount efficiency to whether the surrounding business practices can scale responsibly.
The entire Medvi run is a case study of just absolute big dicking it at every turn, in the most eggregious way possible, with 0 fucks given in any way Men can't conquer the world anymore so they run up $1b blackhat schemes and then flex on new york times Lesson in there
Great video by @coffeebreak_YT breaking down questionable aspects of Medvi - Has an FDA warning letter - Ads w/ fake doctors - AI generated before / after photos & testimonials NYT article mentions none of this for some reason, full video in reply [video]
BREAKING 🚨: This is extremely illegal. This is Matthew Gallagher, who created 800+ Facebook accounts posing as fake doctors to advertise on Facebook, and went on to build a GLP-1 telehealth company with just $20,000, AI, and only one full-time teammate, his brother. The New York …
Watching in realtime as people learn about white label, drop shipping, and affiliate marketing is like seeing cavemen “fire bad” White label telemedicine is a huge benefit with a net positive for humanity. It has been the driving force behind big pharma lowering prices and
Hot take: the Medvi story has nothing to do with AI. A guy built a $1.8B company with 2 people. Cool. But strip away the AI headline and look at what's underneath: Telehealth subscriptions. I've been in this space. I've seen the numbers up close. The LTVs are borderline unfair
The NYT just profiled Medvi as the AI success story of the decade. $1.8B in projected revenue, 2 employees, Sam Altman's prediction made real. Here's what the NYT didn't lead with. Medvi received FDA Warning Letter #721455 in February 2026 for misbranding violations. Their
Medvi was sued in a class action last month for violating California's anti-spam law. “MEDVi's affiliate marketers send spam use falsified header information, spoofed domains and nonsensical sending addresses to evade spam filters. They also use false and deceptive subject [image…
Medvi received FDA Warning Letter #721455 in February 2026 for misbranding violations. Their clinician network OpenLoop suffered a data breach in January 2026 that exposed 1.6 million patient records. Futurism reported they used AI-generated deepfake before-and-after photos in [i…
The @nytimes writes a hype piece about a clear healthcare scam and at no point goes “hey maybe something is off here?” And people wonder why no one in the business world trusts NYT to be objective? You guys barely understand how anything works! It's embarrassing incompetence.
One hundred percent correct. If you're building a brick-and-mortar local bakery, ok. If you're building a “selling fake drugs that don't exist promoted by fake doctors who don't exist” business, definitely stfu!
they have ~800 ads running right now from fake doctors (and another 4,000 running with fake testimonials and from fake organizations). 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) [im…
I think this Medvi situation is the perfect reason why you do not follow the absolute brain dead take “build in public” Even ignoring the actual issues, when you're big enough, everyone is going to come for you.
I really did not want to be writing this morning. But this issue is too important. It's been said that the last thing the weather person should do before going on the air is look out the window. The _day before_ @eringriffith profiled Medvi in @nytimes as the AI company of the
They made facebook accounts for 800+ fake doctors (I had Claude verify, none of them are actually doctors, especially not “Dr. Tuckr Carlzyn MD") to advertise on Facebook. This is extremely illegal, just takes FTC to notice it and it'll be hard for them to advertise on FB [image]
Interesting telehealth class action lawsuit: A guy bought “oral tirzepatide” from MEDvi (not a defendant). Problem is, allegedly, oral tirzepatide is not a compound that actually exists. It is allegedly impossible for it to exist. Inert. He's suing OpenLoop and Triad for [image]
In May 2025, I first reported that Medvi was very obviously fabricating before-and-after weight loss images of purported GLP-1 customers who were not real. “Sometimes you have to see it to believe it,” the company stated next to the falsified images. https://futurism.com/... [ima…
I am appalled by the puff piece NYT wrote about “billion dollar” company Medvi. Here's a very different perspective: https://garymarcus.substack.com/ ...
medvi is only the tip of the iceberg if you knew how people are scaling with ai ugc fake doctors are nothing compared to what really happens in the ai ugc industry oh god you are so naive
Confused as to why Matthew Gallagher and Medvi are catching so much heat. Still haven't seen one person calling them scammers explain why. The New York Times verified the financials. Hims and Hers is a publicly traded telehealth company prescribing the same category of weight
Friend got a marketing email from Medvi this morning. Email copy aside, the provider they are using in the screenshot is an actual doctor, not an NP, whose real name is Alec Wier, and he is COMPLETELY UNAFFILIATED with Medvi. This entire company is run on fraud and deception [ima…