Most entrepreneurs look for broken industries. Jonathan Adly looked for broken software.
After spending nearly fifteen years as a pharmacist, he became convinced that the biggest obstacle to better healthcare wasn’t physicians, pharmacists, or even regulation. It was the technology powering the entire system.
“The pharmacy ecosystem is not well served by the technology solutions that exist today,” Adly says. “Many of these systems were developed decades ago. They’re extremely outdated, they don’t communicate with one another, and because they’re the systems of record, they’re incredibly difficult to replace.”
That realization became the foundation for TJM Labs, the AI company Adly founded to automate pharmacy operations through intelligent AI agents. While much of the healthcare AI conversation focuses on diagnostics or clinical decision making, TJM Labs is tackling a different challenge: the repetitive operational work that consumes pharmacists’ time before they ever interact with a patient.
Today, the company’s AI agents process prescription data, automate administrative workflows, and support hundreds of pharmacies. Following more than $100 million in funding raised over the past six months, TJM Labs is accelerating its mission to become the defining AI platform for modern pharmacy operations.
From Pharmacy Counter to Company Founder
Adly didn’t set out to become a software founder, his career began behind the pharmacy counter, where he experienced firsthand the operational friction pharmacists navigate every day. Rather than solving clinical problems, much of their work revolved around data entry, disconnected systems, insurance processing, and manual administrative tasks.
After leaving an administrative role within a health system, he taught himself how to code and began consulting with organizations across the pharmacy ecosystem.
One customer had secured a major contract and suddenly needed to hire nearly 200 pharmacy technicians within weeks. Instead of recruiting more people, Adly proposed something different.
“I said, ‘Let me take a stab at automating it.'”
Over the course of a holiday break, his team built an AI-driven workflow that dramatically reduced the customer’s staffing requirements. What began as a practical solution for one pharmacy quickly revealed a much larger market opportunity.
Selling Labor, Not Software
Most enterprise software still follows the same model it has for decades: sell licenses, train employees to use the software, and rely on people to perform the work. Adly believes that model is coming to an end.
“When you buy the software,” he says, “you buy the labor that needs to operate the software with it.”
Rather than selling another dashboard or workflow management platform, the company deploys AI agents capable of performing repetitive, high-volume operational work continuously. According to Adly, one AI agent can perform the equivalent work of roughly three full-time employees because it operates around the clock without interruption.
Instead of asking employees to learn new software, the software learns the employee’s job. It’s a subtle distinction, but one Adly believes represents the next evolution of enterprise technology.
“We don’t think traditional software is going to do well over the next five, ten, or twenty years,” he says. “The future is software that actually performs the work.”
AI Shouldn’t Replace Pharmacists
Despite leading an AI company, Adly has little interest in replacing healthcare professionals. In fact, he argues the opposite. He compares pharmacists to airline pilots.
Modern aircraft can already handle much of the flying process automatically, yet society still expects trained pilots in the cockpit because even a small mistake carries enormous consequences.
Healthcare, he believes, demands the same philosophy.
“The pharmacist is irreplaceable,” Adly says. “At the end of the process, there’s always a pharmacist checking, double checking, and verifying everything.”
For TJM Labs, AI exists to remove repetitive administrative work while preserving human oversight where clinical judgment matters most. That human-in-the-loop approach has become a defining principle of the company’s products.
Economics Are Driving Innovation
While artificial intelligence often dominates headlines, Adly believes the real force accelerating adoption is simple economics.
Independent pharmacies frequently operate on razor-thin margins, often between two and four percent. At the same time, reimbursement rates remain largely outside their control, while staffing shortages continue to worsen.
“It’s a very difficult business,” he says.
Rather than viewing automation as a luxury, Adly sees it as essential infrastructure.
He estimates that deploying a single TJM Labs AI agent can dramatically improve operating margins by reducing labor-intensive administrative work, allowing pharmacy owners to invest more resources into patient care and business growth.
For many customers, the question is no longer whether to automate, but how quickly they can.
Creating a New Category
While AI is reshaping nearly every industry, Adly believes pharmacy presents one of the clearest opportunities to demonstrate its value. Rather than expanding into dozens of verticals, TJM Labs is focused on becoming the category leader in pharmacy by combining deep domain expertise with AI built specifically for pharmacists, technicians, and pharmacy operators. The company’s strategy is simple: own one industry exceptionally well before anyone else does.
“We created the category,” he says. “AI agents for pharmacy didn’t exist before.”
That category-first mindset has shaped TJM Labs’ rapid growth. Following more than $100 million in funding raised over the past six months, the company is investing aggressively in product development, partnerships, and expanding its leadership position as the pioneer of AI Agents for Pharmacy.
As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, Adly believes pharmacy remains at the beginning of a fundamental transformation. “What we’re doing today is the floor,” he says. “There’s a much higher ceiling as AI continues to advance.” For TJM Labs, that future isn’t about becoming another general AI company. It’s about continuing to define what AI-native pharmacy operations look like and ensuring that when the industry thinks about AI agents for pharmacy, it thinks of TJM Labs first.
