Last week, Chewy dropped about $500 million to acquire Modern Animal, a veterinary platform with 29 clinics, 24/7 virtual care, and over 100,000 member families. The deal is expected to close this quarter, and when it does, Chewy Vet Care more than doubles their locations overnight.

Modern Animal was already an outlier before this. Its clinics are built around a digital-first client experience, with a membership model that aims to keep clients engaged between visits. Revenue per clinic reportedly runs well above industry averages, and its client base skews younger and more urban. Chewy sees that base as an on-ramp to something much bigger. CEO Sumit Singh called it a move to build "a clear competitive moat." That phrasing tells you something important about how this is being framed internally: veterinary care as a competitive advantage in a broader business model, not primarily as a medical service.

We are watching the veterinary services market, estimated at around $40 billion, attract a new kind of capital. It used to be mostly private equity-backed consolidators, and now includes publicly traded retailers and technology platforms.

In the near term, not much changes for the vets working in Modern Animal clinics. Chewy has every incentive to keep the model intact while it integrates. But the longer arc matters. Chewy is now a vertically integrated pet health company in a way it simply was not last week, with pharmacy, retail, telehealth, and in-person care all flowing through the same corporate structure. The practice becomes one node in a larger commercial network, rather than the center of the client relationship.

There is a workforce angle here too. Modern Animal has attracted veterinarians who want salaried positions, reasonable hours, and tech-forward workflows. As Chewy scales that model nationally, it will be recruiting against private practice and other corporate groups, but with the balance sheet of a publicly traded company behind it. For vets weighing their options, that is a meaningful new variable.

Last month, the National Association of Veterinary Technicians in America officially came out against the Veterinary Professional Associate (VPA) model, calling the current framework inadequate in its clinical preparation and arguing it fails to appropriately integrate or recognize credentialed veterinary technicians (CrVTs). NAVTA's board, following a comprehensive task force review, endorsed instead a progressive, technician-centered education pathway building through accredited associate, bachelor's, and eventually master's-level programs -- with robust specialty credentialing at each stage.

This is not a minor footnote. NAVTA represents the workforce that is arguably most directly affected by the VPA model, and their position lands on top of opposition already on record from the AVMA, AAHA, AAEP, and most state VMAs. The profession's organized resistance to the VPA is broad and consistent.

Applications for VPA registration are now open in the state. The required licensing exam is being developed by the American Association of Veterinary State Boards and is not expected to be available until late 2026, which means no practicing VPAs for at least another year. Colorado State University's new Master of Science in Veterinary Clinical Care, which is the first program in the country specifically designed to train VPAs, is expecting the first graduating class in 2027. The program is five semesters: three of online coursework, one intensive on-campus lab semester, and a condensed clinical practicum.

That practicum piece is where critics keep focusing. The concern is not that VPA graduates will be incompetent in the narrow tasks they are trained to perform. The concern is that a condensed clinical practicum produces practitioners who lack the diagnostic depth and contextual judgment that comes from years of full-spectrum clinical training.

What happens in Colorado will be watched closely by every other state. Florida has had related legislation introduced in two consecutive sessions. The VPA debate is not just a Colorado experiment, it’s a proof of concept that either validates or complicates the model for the entire country.

What do you think of the VPA moving forward in this way? Reply to this email and let us know!

It’s pretty common in AI to see headlines that seem disjointed from reality. They are often overhyped claims about performance that doesn’t seem to match most people’s lived experience. Usually I try to avoid talking about these, especially when they involve claims of AI sentience. But for whatever reason this time feels a bit different… today I want to talk about Anthropic Mythos.

This week, Anthropic announced that it has a new AI model which it considers too powerful for public release. If you want to nerd out they published at 244 page system card on the model. The reason they are delaying the public release is that during its testing it was able to identify a large number of security vulnerabilities across numerous codebases. This means that if it were released, hackers could use it to take down large parts of the internet. Instead of releasing the model, Anthropic has created a closed door test of the model called Project Glasswing. They invited most major technology companies (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, NVIDIA, Linux Foundation and many others) to use the model in a closed ecosystem. This allows them to stress test their systems, use the model to proactively identify vulnerabilities and then presumably fix them. This is a relatively responsible approach. However, it still raises alarm bells.

Now that a model like this exists, presumably it is only time until more and more powerful systems are in place. This has been the likely outcome for a long time, and there is still the possibility that rise in capabilities for new releases plateau. However, the reason I am buying the hype a little more today is the dramatic increase in coding ability that these systems have had in recent months. The models can now improve themselves, so every new version is better than the last in part due to the application of the most recent powerful model.

While Anthropic has taken responsible steps today, the downstream effects of having these models is still unknown. Job displacement, cyber security threats, other unknowns. We have no definitive evidence of how these systems will impact our world. Only theories and speculation. While the direct connection to veterinary medicine is tenuous, it bears noting that if large swaths of our clientele lose their jobs, our services become even further economically unviable. The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei has even predicted that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next five years.

If it becomes easy to hack computer systems, our websites, EMRs and other technological infrastructure is at risk, even if your average veterinary clinic is not the direct target.

Most of the time these models get tested internally, but this is the first time I am aware of a major AI company calling together others in the industry with a closed release to battle harden the ecosystem for the future deployment. On top of that, Anthropic reportedly hired a psychiatrist to evaluate the model. The company has long held that it believes AI may have some evidence of consciousness and now suggests that with increasing model power there is increasingly likelihood that models have some form of “experience, interests and welfare.”

Some of this is most definitely over-hyped. This model, like many predecessors, may not live up to this degree of hype and consideration. But it does mark a shift in where the discourse is moving around AI.

Where does this all go next? I have no idea. But following the technological progress is both remarkable and scary. I will continue to post about the weekly AI news and relate it to your role as a veterinarian here. If there are specifics you are interested in, reply to this email and let me know.

-RBA

Here are some of the other stories that caught our eye and we're following this week from around the veterinary world and animal kingdom: