American Well Corporation (AMWL): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

American Well Corporation (AMWL) is navigating a massive strategic shift, but are they truly a software company now that subscription revenue is expected to hit nearly 60% of their $245 million to $250 million fiscal year 2025 revenue guidance? This pivot, which includes securing key contracts like the extension with the U.S. Defense Health Agency, is defintely critical as they work to narrow their Adjusted EBITDA loss to between negative $45 million and negative $42 million this year. You need to understand the engine behind this transformation-how their Converge platform works, who owns the long-term strategy, and the precise mechanics of a business model moving away from lower-margin visit revenue.

American Well Corporation (AMWL) History

If you want to understand American Well Corporation (AMWL), you have to look past the recent stock volatility and see the nearly two-decade journey from a simple telemedicine concept to a full-scale, enterprise-focused digital care platform. The company's history is a clear map of the telehealth industry's evolution, moving from basic on-demand visits to complex, integrated software solutions for major health systems and payers.

The core takeaway is that the company has fundamentally shifted its business model, which is why its 2025 financial guidance projects a full-year revenue between $245 million and $248 million and an Adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to between negative $45 million and negative $42 million. This is a company aggressively trading short-term revenue for a higher-margin, subscription-based future, with a clear path to generating positive cash flow from operations by the end of 2026.

American Well Corporation's Founding Timeline

Year established

American Well Corporation was founded in 2006.

Original location

The company was established in Boston, Massachusetts.

Founding team members

The company was co-founded by brothers Dr. Ido Schoenberg and Dr. Roy Schoenberg.

Initial capital/funding

Early operations were fueled by venture capital, with a notable Series A funding round in 2007 that secured $23 million for initial platform development and market entry.

American Well Corporation's Evolution Milestones

American Well Corporation's Transformative Moments

The company's trajectory was fundamentally reshaped by three transformative decisions, moving it from a direct-to-consumer (D2C) service provider to a pure enterprise technology partner. This is why the focus is now squarely on the Converge platform, which is an integrated, modular software solution for health systems and payers.

The most important moment was the 2020 IPO and concurrent strategic investment, which gave the company the war chest needed to execute this enterprise pivot.

• The Capital Infusion: The September 2020 IPO, including the full exercise of the underwriters' option and the Google Cloud investment, generated aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $922 million. This massive capital raise funded the development of the next-generation Converge platform.
• The Enterprise Pivot: The company consciously shifted from prioritizing its own Amwell Medical Group (AMG) visits to focusing on selling its platform to large health systems and health plans. This is a tough move, but it results in more predictable, high-margin subscription revenue; in Q3 2025, subscription revenue hit $30.9 million.
• The Efficiency Drive: In 2025, the company aggressively cut costs and divested noncore assets, like the sale of Amwell Psychiatric Care. Here's the quick math: the full-year 2025 Adjusted EBITDA loss is guided to be between negative $45 million and negative $42 million, which is a significant improvement, reflecting a more than 60% year-over-year improvement in adjusted EBITDA.

This efficiency push, plus the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the core workflow layer, is defintely the roadmap for achieving cash flow breakeven by the end of 2026. You can dig deeper into the company's strategic goals here: Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of American Well Corporation (AMWL).

American Well Corporation (AMWL) Ownership Structure

American Well Corporation (AMWL) is controlled by a highly concentrated blend of institutional and insider capital, which is unusual for a publicly traded company. Insiders, including founders and key executives, hold a significant majority of the company's shares, meaning their interests defintely drive the strategic direction and decision-making.

Given Company's Current Status

American Well Corporation is a publicly traded company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol AMWL. This status requires the company to adhere to rigorous financial reporting standards set by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), providing transparency to the diverse spectrum of individual investors and financial professionals who hold its stock. The company recently reported its Third Quarter 2025 results on November 4, 2025.

Given Company's Ownership Breakdown

The ownership structure as of the 2025 fiscal year reflects a high degree of insider concentration, which gives management and early investors substantial control over the company's governance and strategy. For a deeper dive into the valuation metrics that accompany this structure, you can read Breaking Down American Well Corporation (AMWL) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Here's the quick math: Insiders owning nearly 60% of the stock means they can effectively block most shareholder resolutions, so retail investor influence is limited.

Given Company's Leadership

The company is steered by its co-founders and a seasoned team of healthcare and technology executives, maintaining a dual-leadership structure at the top. This team is responsible for navigating the competitive digital health market and executing the strategic shift toward the Converge platform.

• Dr. Ido Schoenberg, M.D.: Chairman & Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He oversees corporate strategy and co-founded the company in 2006.
• Dr. Roy Schoenberg, M.D., M.P.H.: Executive Vice Chairman. He co-founded the company alongside Ido Schoenberg.
• Mark J. Hirschhorn, CPA: Chief Financial Officer (CFO) & Chief Operating Officer (COO). He manages the financial aspects and enterprise-wide optimization.
• Dan Zamansky: Chief Product and Technology Officer. He previously held leadership roles at Amazon Web Services (AWS) Health AI.
• Phyllis I. Gotlib: President, Amwell International. She leads the company's operations outside the US.
• Dr. Cynthia Horner, M.D.: Chief Medical Officer and President of Amwell Medical Group.

The leadership team's long history together, including co-founding previous companies, suggests a deeply aligned vision, but still, this tight-knit group faces the challenge of turning their platform vision into consistent profitability.

American Well Corporation (AMWL) Mission and Values

American Well Corporation's core purpose moves beyond simply providing a technology platform; it is fundamentally about transforming healthcare delivery to be more accessible, affordable, and higher quality for everyone involved-providers, payers, and patients.

American Well Corporation's Core Purpose

You're looking at a company that is executing a strategic pivot, as seen by its revised 2025 revenue guidance of $245 million to $248 million, so understanding their mission is defintely crucial to assessing their long-term viability beyond the current push for cash flow breakeven by 2026. This is about their cultural DNA.

Official mission statement

The mission statement is direct and ecosystem-focused, aiming to connect all major stakeholders in the care continuum. It's a clear statement of intent for a company that intends to have subscription software revenue constitute nearly 60% of its total 2025 revenues.

• We connect and enable providers, insurers, patients, and innovators to deliver greater access to more affordable, higher quality care.

Honesty, the mission's goal is to help customers reduce care costs, improve clinical outcomes, and offer the highest member engagement through exceptional user experience.

Vision statement

While not a single, formally titled statement, American Well Corporation's vision centers on becoming the essential, technology-enabled backbone for hybrid care (a mix of in-person, virtual, and automated care). They are committed to making their new ARM platform the most effective and valuable hybrid care backbone they have ever offered.

• Transforming Care Delivery by bringing together technology, services, and devices into a connected ecosystem of care.
• Positioning the platform as a highly dependable, secure, and scalable technology-enabled care solution.

The vision is about being the integrator, not just another point solution. This is a big bet, especially as they manage an Adjusted EBITDA guidance of negative $45 million to negative $42 million for 2025.

American Well Corporation's Core Values

The company's values are the operating principles that drive this mission, particularly as they move AI into the core workflow layer to transform patient intake and navigation.

• Customer First: Understand and support clients, embrace change, and drive innovation in healthcare.
• One Team: Build a team of outstanding people who communicate with respect and honesty, celebrating similarities and honoring differences.
• Deliver Awesome: Bring passion, integrity, and agility to the work, seeking to deliver quality and holding themselves accountable for results.

You can read more about their underlying philosophy here: Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of American Well Corporation (AMWL).

American Well Corporation slogan/tagline

The most prominent phrase used to encapsulate the company's strategic direction and long-term goal is a clear, purpose-driven statement.

• Empowering the transformation of digital healthcare with purpose.

This tagline perfectly maps to their current strategy of divesting non-core assets-like the announced sale of Amwell Psychiatric Care-to focus resources on this core purpose.

American Well Corporation (AMWL) How It Works

American Well Corporation operates as a comprehensive, software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform provider, acting as the digital infrastructure backbone that enables health systems and payers to deliver virtual and hybrid care experiences to their patients and members.

The company primarily makes money through recurring subscription revenue from its platform, which accounted for $30.90 million of its Q3 2025 revenue, plus revenue from providing clinical services through its own medical group and selling connected devices. Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of American Well Corporation (AMWL).

American Well Corporation's Product/Service Portfolio

American Well Corporation's Operational Framework

The core of American Well Corporation's operation is the migration of its clients onto its single, unified Converge platform, a strategic move aimed at simplifying its technology stack and improving margins. This shift focuses on delivering a centralized, standard platform experience instead of expensive, one-time customizations for each customer.

Here's the quick math on their focus: subscription software revenue grew by 17.8% year-over-year in Q3 2025 to $30.90 million, while total visit volume fell about 21%, showing the deliberate pivot away from lower-margin, visit-based services toward high-margin software subscriptions. They are a software company now, not just a telehealth provider.

• Platform Consolidation: Actively transitioning all major clients, including large health plans like Florida Blue, to the Converge platform for unified digital care.
• Cost Discipline: Implementing significant cost-reduction measures across the board, like cutting Research & Development expenses by 12.2% year-over-year in Q2 2025, to improve the path to profitability.
• AI Integration: Moving artificial intelligence (AI) directly into the core workflow layer to simplify the customer experience and increase value for clinical program partners.
• Value Creation: The platform creates value by enabling clients to align technology with measurable economic benefits, helping them address critical challenges like clinician burnout and operational inefficiencies.

American Well Corporation's Strategic Advantages

American Well Corporation's competitive edge is not just its technology, but its deep entrenchment with large, sophisticated healthcare organizations-the payers and health systems that control the bulk of the US healthcare spend.

The company's full-year 2025 revenue is guided to be between $245 million and $248 million, which is underpinned by these key advantages:

• Enterprise Client Base: The platform powers digital care programs for approximately 50 health plans, covering over 80 million covered lives, and around 100 of the largest health systems in the U.S.. This scale is a significant barrier to entry for competitors.
• Government Contracts: A long-standing, strategic relationship with the US Defense Health Agency (DHA), which continues to enable the Military Health System to deliver connected care, provides a stable, high-profile revenue stream.
• Vendor Fatigue Solution: Management is positioning the Converge platform as the single, integrated 'technology-enabled care infrastructure' that directly addresses the market's 'vendor fatigue,' which is a real problem when health systems have dozens of disparate digital tools.
• Financial Runway: Ending Q3 2025 with approximately $201 million in cash and no debt provides a solid cash runway to execute its strategy toward achieving positive cash flow from operations by the end of 2026.

American Well Corporation (AMWL) How It Makes Money

American Well Corporation, or Amwell, makes money primarily by selling its comprehensive digital health platform, Converge, to large healthcare clients on a subscription basis, and secondarily by providing clinical services through its own network of providers, the Amwell Medical Group (AMG).

The company is undergoing a strategic shift, moving away from lower-margin, volume-based visit revenue toward a more predictable, high-margin software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription model, which is expected to account for nearly 60% of total 2025 revenue.

American Well Corporation's Revenue Breakdown

Based on the Q3 2025 financial results, the company's revenue streams clearly reflect this pivot to a technology-first model.

The Platform Subscription Revenue, which reached $30.9 million in Q3 2025, is the core growth engine, showing an 18% year-over-year increase.

Visit Revenue, which comes from the Amwell Medical Group (AMG) clinical services, was $21.2 million in Q3 2025 but is declining as the company divests noncore clinical assets like Amwell Psychiatric Care (APC).

Business Economics

The business model is built on a high-fixed-cost, high-leverage software platform (Converge) where profitability scales with client adoption, not just patient volume. This is why the gross margin is expanding, even with overall revenue volatility.

• Pricing Model: The primary revenue source is a subscription fee paid by large enterprises-health systems, payers, and government entities like the U.S. Defense Health Agency (DHA)-for access to the Converge platform.
• Gross Margin Expansion: The GAAP gross margin expanded to 52% in Q3 2025, a significant jump from 37% a year prior, directly linked to the higher contribution from the software subscription mix.
• Visit Economics: The average revenue per visit (ARPV) through AMG was approximately $71 in Q3 2025, with management noting a favorable mix shift toward higher-priced virtual primary and specialty care visits.
• Operating Leverage: Management is defintely focused on operational efficiency to drive future profit. They project full-year 2025 operating expense reductions, including Sales and Marketing (S&M) down more than 25% and Research and Development (R&D) down over 10% compared to 2024.

Here's the quick math: A higher percentage of 52% gross margin subscription revenue replacing lower-margin visit revenue means the overall profitability profile improves, even if total sales are flat.

You can learn more about who is funding this transition by Exploring American Well Corporation (AMWL) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

American Well Corporation's Financial Performance

The company's financial performance in 2025 shows a clear trade-off: revenue growth is tempered by strategic divestitures, but the path to profitability is accelerating due to cost discipline and a better revenue mix.

• Full-Year Revenue: The revised fiscal year 2025 GAAP revenue guidance is between $245 million and $248 million.
• Adjusted EBITDA Improvement: The full-year 2025 Adjusted EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization, a non-GAAP measure of operating performance) loss is forecast to narrow significantly to a range of ($45 million) to ($42 million), an improvement from earlier guidance.
• Net Loss: The GAAP net loss for Q3 2025 was ($31.91 million), which is a 27.5% year-over-year improvement, showing progress on loss reduction despite the revenue decline.
• Liquidity: The balance sheet remains strong with approximately $201 million in cash and marketable securities as of the end of Q3 2025, with no debt, providing a cushion for the transition.
• Future Target: Management has reiterated its objective to achieve positive cash flow from operations in 2026, driven by the shift to the higher-margin subscription model and ongoing cost cuts.

What this estimate hides is the potential impact of the DHA contract renewal, which represents a massive component of the business and is essential for longer-term stability.

American Well Corporation (AMWL) Market Position & Future Outlook

American Well Corporation (AMWL) is strategically pivoting to become the pure-play, enterprise-grade technology backbone for hybrid care, moving away from its lower-margin, visit-based services. This focus on its Converge platform positions it as a critical infrastructure partner for major U.S. health systems and payers, but its scale remains small relative to the market leader.

Competitive Landscape

In the highly fragmented and competitive telehealth sector, American Well Corporation's primary competition comes from integrated virtual care providers and direct-to-consumer (D2C) models. The company's core strategy is to be the platform (SaaS) provider for healthcare organizations, which differentiates it from the pure-play clinical service models.

Here's the quick math: Teladoc Health's projected 2025 revenue of up to $2.539 billion dwarfs American Well Corporation's projected revenue of up to $248 million, illustrating the massive scale difference in the overall virtual care market.

Opportunities & Challenges

The company is focused on a disciplined path to profitability, targeting cash flow breakeven by the end of 2026. This requires successful execution of its platform-centric strategy and aggressive cost management.

Industry Position

American Well Corporation holds a key position as an infrastructure provider (telehealth platform), not just a service provider, but it is defintely a small-cap player in the broader healthcare technology landscape. As of November 2025, the company's market capitalization is approximately $64.87 million, reflecting a volatile, high-risk, high-reward profile.

The company's strategy hinges on its B2B model, making it less vulnerable to the consumer-side marketing wars but highly dependent on large-scale enterprise sales cycles.

• Subscription Focus: Subscription revenue reached $30.9 million in Q3 2025, representing 55% of total revenue and signaling a healthier, more predictable business model.
• Financial Efficiency: Adjusted EBITDA guidance for FY2025 was narrowed to a loss of negative $45 million to negative $42 million, showing significant improvement from the prior year's loss of $134.4 million in 2024.
• Analyst Sentiment: The consensus among Wall Street analysts is currently a 'Hold' rating, with a predicted average upside of over 107% from the current low stock price, showing cautious optimism about the turnaround.

The path to sustainable growth lies in the successful deployment of the Converge platform and its new AI capabilities. You can read more about the financial details here: Breaking Down American Well Corporation (AMWL) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors