Nutrition Startup Athletic Greens Raises Alpha Wave-Led $115M Round, Joins Unicorn Ranks

Wellness and nutrition company. athletic greens raised $115 million in new funding and boasts a new valuation of over $1 billion, making it one of the latest unicorns in the startup world.

The round, the company’s second injection of venture capital in its 11-year existence, marks a major turning point for the New Zealand-based startup, Kat Colethe company’s president and chief operating officer told Crunchbase News last week.

“This (last) year was the first time with outside capital … in the company’s history that there was material spending and effort around the brand,” he said.

Athletic Greens, founded in 2010 by the CEO chris ahenden, is known for its flagship product, AG1, a powder that can be made into a drink with 75 vitamins, minerals, and nutrients intended to improve health and energy.

While the product was sold in Amazon for a short time, today it is only available through the company’s website. But that doesn’t appear to have slowed consumer acceptance of Athletic Green, company leaders say.

“We have incredible momentum in our mission to help people around the world take charge of their everyday health by focusing on foundational nutrition,” Ashenden said in a statement. “Consumers demand more from the health products they use every day, and we have become a leader in helping people achieve their functional health goals with an incredibly high-quality and convenient product, AG1.”

Global Alpha Wave led the round of financing, with the participation of SC. Holdings Y david blitzerthe family office bolt companies.

The round also attracted a long list of sports, business and media personalities, including those who trust the company’s AG1 powder. Among them: Dr. Peter Attia, brand ford, Alex Honnold, Chiney Ogwumike, antonio pomliano, Shane Parish, jim toth, Amy Griffin from G9 companies, joe fork, Packy McCormick‘s Capital not boring, jeremy jauncey, tanya sam, Jaime Schmidt, miki agrawal, Radha Agrawal, Marcy Simon, swan sitDan Churchill dave peacock Y harold hughes.

rick gerson, president and chief investment officer of Alpha Wave Global, and Mark Vadon, founder of zulily Y Blue Nile, and former president of Tough, will join the Athletic Greens board of directors.

“The story of how Chris (Ashenden) and the team built Athletic Greens from the ground up to this point while they were starting up until very recently is a remarkable one, and we believe the story is just beginning,” Gerson said in a statement. “They have built an impressive business based on a best-in-class product, an innovative customer acquisition model, and most importantly, a relentless focus on the customer.”

Cole, who has extensive food brand leadership experience, including some 11 years in focus marks, parent company of cinnamon, aunt anna, of moe, by McAllister Y Jamba juice—joined Athletic Greens in December.

The new influx of money will be used to scale basically all levels of the organization, Cole said, but she will focus much of that capital on hiring, innovating the AG1 mix, revealing more products next year, expanding geographic reach of the company and the growth of the company’s production capacities.

The money has allowed the company to do business in earnest for the first time, Cole added. So far, the startup’s customer base has grown mostly through word of mouth. The company does not disclose the exact number of subscribers who receive an Athletic Greens shipment each month, but the number is in the “hundreds of thousands,” it said.

His five-year goal is to see that number grow to 20 million global subscribers, half of them in the United States. The company plans to get there through its tried-and-true method of “quality over quantity, less is more and making it a habit is easy, not a thing more,” Cole said.

“The fact that (AG1) changes so many lives; there is a really noble mission of what if only most of us had 50 percent of our family and became AG customers? she added. “It’s not crazy to think about reaching that number of customers. … And there will be a day when Athletic Greens products are available outside of atletismoverdes.com.”

Illustration: Dom Guzman