In September 2024, Matthew Gallagher launched a telehealth company from his Los Angeles home with $20,000, a dozen AI tools and no employees. By the end of 2025, the company, Medvi, reported 250,000 customers, $401 million in revenue and $65 million in net profit, according to The Neuron and Dealroom, with no outside funding.

Medvi is one of seven companies below that are reported to have reached hundreds of millions in revenue or billions in value on little or no outside money. Here are the numbers, the origin stories and the asterisks for each.

Cards on a black background showing seven reported figures: Medvi $401 million 2025 revenue, Surge AI over $1 billion 2024 revenue, Midjourney $200 million 2023 revenue pace, Gamma $2.1 billion valuation, Fireflies.ai over $1 billion valuation, Mailchimp $12 billion sale to Intuit, and Zoho 12,313 crore rupees FY25 revenue.
Seven companies and one reported figure each. White figures are revenue; red figures are a valuation or sale price. Each is as reported.

First, three different measures

Revenue, valuation and funding are not the same thing. Revenue is what a company takes in. A valuation is a price set by a funding round, a share sale or an acquisition. Funding is the outside money a company raised. The companies below are reported on different measures, so the figures are not directly comparable.

1. Medvi: $20,000, a dozen AI tools and zero employees

Gallagher launched Medvi in September 2024 from his Los Angeles home, according to The Neuron’s April 6, 2026 report, published by eWeek. It reached 300 customers in its first month and added 1,000 more in the second. By the end of 2025 it had 250,000 customers, $401 million in revenue in its first full year and a 16.2% net profit margin, compared with 5.5% at Hims & Hers, a public competitor with more than 2,400 employees, according to the article.

Gallagher used ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Midjourney, Runway and ElevenLabs to write code, produce website copy, make ad images and videos, handle customer service and analyze performance, and he built AI agents to connect his software systems. His only hire was his younger brother. Partners CareValidate and OpenLoop Health handle doctors, pharmacies, prescriptions and shipping. As of April 2026, the article said, Medvi was on track for $1.8 billion in sales in 2026, which is a projection.

The asterisks. Dealroom, summarizing New York Times and Forbes reporting dated April 2, 2026, says Medvi has raised no outside funding and has no valuation, and it does not say who verified the figures. On February 20, 2026, the FDA issued a warning letter addressed to Medvi LLC about content on medvi.io, alleging false or misleading claims about compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide products, according to Futurism. In an April 8 statement, Medvi and Gallagher said the letter was directed at an affiliate marketing agency and that medvi.io is not Medvi’s address, which is medvi.org; Futurism noted that the letter was addressed to Medvi LLC. Futurism also reported allegations that Medvi’s marketing used AI-generated before-and-after photos and AI-generated doctors, and Medvi said it had updated its marketing practices to prohibit that type of advertising.

2. Surge AI: more than $1 billion in revenue and no outside funding reported

Edwin Chen, an MIT graduate who worked as a machine learning engineer at Facebook, Dropbox, Google and Twitter, founded Surge AI in 2020 to label data for training AI systems, according to Forbes as reported by VnExpress International on March 14, 2026. The company generated more than $1 billion in revenue by 2024 from clients including Google, Anthropic and OpenAI, per the same article. Forbes estimates Chen’s net worth at about $18 billion, mostly from a stake of more than 75% in the company. Inc. described Surge AI in October 2025 as having bootstrapped its way to $1 billion in revenue, according to a CO/AI summary of the article.

In July 2025, Reuters reported, citing sources, that Surge AI had hired advisers to raise as much as $1 billion in the first capital raise in its history, mixing primary and secondary capital, with the secondary portion meant to give employees liquidity. Outlets relaying the report put the target valuation above $15 billion, and VnExpress reported in March 2026 that it was reportedly seeking more than $25 billion. On Getlatka’s LinkedIn-based count of 121 employees in June 2025, $1 billion of revenue works out to roughly $8 million per employee (Lens arithmetic; the revenue and headcount are from different dates).

The asterisks. The sources reviewed do not confirm that a round has closed, and other outlets report funding and valuation figures that conflict with each other.

3. Midjourney: “no investors,” according to its CEO

CEO David Holz said on X in August 2025 that Midjourney “remains independent with no investors,” and TechCrunch described it as one of the few leading AI model developers that has “never taken on outside funding.” The Information reported that by 2023 the company was on pace for $200 million in revenue; plans start at $10 a month and reach $120 a month. On August 22, 2025, Meta announced a deal to license Midjourney’s image and video technology; the terms were not disclosed, and Upstarts Media reported that Meta had earlier discussed acquiring the company (TechCrunch).

The asterisks. Disney and NBCUniversal filed a copyright lawsuit against Midjourney on June 11, 2025 in the Central District of California, according to coverage cited in search results. Midjourney does not publish financials after 2023; GetLatka estimates about $500 million of revenue for 2025, a third-party estimate. Sacra’s page lists approximately 40 to 45 employees, and other published headcount estimates range from about 10 to about 165.

4. Gamma: a $2.1 billion valuation on about $90 million raised

Gamma, an AI presentation company, announced on November 10, 2025 that it had passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue and raised a $68 million Series B at a $2.1 billion valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz with Accel and Uncork Capital participating; the round included a secondary component for early employees (Pulse 2.0). It reported 70 million users, about 50 employees and more than two years of profitability. The Next Web, in an article contributed by an outside author on August 19, 2026, says Gamma has raised about $90 million in total and about $2 million of revenue per employee. Co-founder Grant Lee said in an interview, “We’re a profitable business, so we don’t need to raise again.” On those figures, the $2.1 billion valuation is about 23 times the roughly $90 million raised (Lens arithmetic).

5. Fireflies.ai: a $1 billion valuation with no new funding round

Fireflies.ai, an AI meeting assistant, announced on June 12, 2025 that it had reached a valuation of over $1 billion following its first tender offer, which gave liquidity to early team members, according to its Business Wire release. The company says it has not raised primary capital since 2021, has been profitable since 2023, has 100 employees across more than 20 countries, and serves 20 million people at more than 500,000 organizations. Khosla Ventures and Canaan Partners are named as backers. The release is company-reported and gives no price or size for the tender offer.

6. Mailchimp: $12 billion and no outside investors

Founded in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Mark Armstrong, Mailchimp started without outside funding and never took outside investors, according to Wikipedia. Bloomberg reported on August 31, 2021 that the company was talking with Intuit after reportedly rejecting buyout offers for about 20 years. Intuit confirmed on September 13, 2021 that it would buy Mailchimp for approximately $12 billion in cash and stock. The deal closed on November 1, 2021, with $5.7 billion in cash and $6.3 billion in Intuit stock, plus 573,000 restricted stock units. Mailchimp is not an AI company; it is included as a pre-generative-AI precedent.

7. Zoho: ₹12,313 crore in revenue, bootstrapped

Zoho reported revenue of ₹12,313 crore in fiscal 2025, up 17.8%, and profit of ₹3,191 crore, down from ₹3,299 crore the year before, according to an Angel One report of April 9, 2026. Revenue has nearly doubled from ₹6,711 crore in fiscal 2022. The report calls Zoho the first bootstrapped startup in India and says it remains privately held and is not actively pursuing public markets. It does not cite a source for the figures.

Side by side

Table on a black background of seven companies reported to have scaled on little or no outside funding: Medvi, Surge AI, Midjourney, Gamma, Fireflies.ai, Mailchimp and Zoho, with their reported outside funding, size and notes.
Seven companies reported to have scaled on little or no outside funding, as reported through November 2, 2026. Figures are as reported by the cited outlets and are not audited.
  • Medvi reports a 16.2% net margin, against 5.5% at Hims & Hers (The Neuron).
  • Gamma reports about $2 million of revenue per employee (The Next Web); Surge AI works out to roughly $8 million on the figures above (Lens arithmetic).
  • Gamma’s $2.1 billion valuation is about 23 times the roughly $90 million it has raised (Lens arithmetic).
  • Zoho’s revenue grew from ₹6,711 crore in fiscal 2022 to ₹12,313 crore in fiscal 2025 (Angel One).
  • Fireflies.ai reports a valuation above $1 billion set without primary capital raised since 2021 (company release).

The other end of the capital spectrum

For contrast, Anthropic’s S-1 reports first-half 2026 revenue of $16.3 billion and a net loss of $80.7 billion, of which $72.4 billion is a non-cash accounting charge, and about $132 billion in cash and readily accessible investments at the end of June. See Lens’s article Anthropic’s IPO Filing: Reported Revenue, Losses and Valuation Figures. For data on how AI is changing who starts companies, see How AI Is Changing Startup Formation.

Sources and notes

Medvi: The Neuron, via eWeek, April 6, 2026; Dealroom, April 5, 2026; Futurism, April 9, 2026. Surge AI: VnExpress International, citing Forbes, March 14, 2026; TheFly, summarizing Reuters, July 1, 2025; CO/AI, summarizing Inc.. Midjourney: TechCrunch, August 22, 2025; Sacra; The Rundown AI on the Disney and NBCUniversal suit. Gamma: Pulse 2.0, November 10, 2025; The Next Web. Fireflies.ai: Business Wire release, via Yahoo Finance, June 12, 2025. Mailchimp: Wikipedia. Zoho: Angel One, April 9, 2026. The Medvi figures are from The Neuron and Dealroom’s summary of New York Times and Forbes reporting; those articles were not read, and the 2026 figure is a projection. The Reuters report on Surge AI is read through TheFly’s summary, which lists the valuation target as “over $1B” while other outlets relaying the report say above $15 billion; the Inc. article was not read; the Getlatka headcount, the $15 billion target and the Surge AI valuation conflicts are from search excerpts. The Midjourney lawsuit, the GetLatka revenue estimate and the headcount range are from search excerpts, and Sacra’s page header lists a $50 million funding figure dated 2025, which conflicts with its text that Midjourney has raised no external funding. The Fireflies.ai release is a paid company release. The Zoho report cites no source for its figures. Graphics: Lens, from the cited reporting. Thumbnail photo: the HP garage at 367-369 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto, California, March 2009. Photo by BrokenSphere via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0; cropped. Illustrative photo; it does not show the companies described.