Fitness wearables firm Whoop is now valued at $3.6 billion after raising $200 million in a Series F funding round led by SoftBank’s second Vision Fund. Other investors who participated in the round include IVP, Cavu Ventures, Thursday Ventures, GP Bullhound, Accomplice, Next View Ventures, and Animal Capital.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Whoop, Will Ahmed, said that the company’s widened relationship with SoftBank comes at a time when the firm plans to expand internationally. “While we have experienced amazing growth in the past year, the potential of our technology and the vast market for health monitoring remains largely untapped,” Will Ahmed said.
The company said that the newly raised funds will be used for developing new technology and hiring more talent. While the latest funding makes Whoop the most valuable independent fitness monitoring startup, it still competes with tech giants Amazon, Apple, and Google, all three companies renowned for their fitness wearables. The newly raised capital, according to CEO Will Ahmed, will boost the company’s competition against these major rivals. “We are competing with companies worth trillions of dollars. When you take over the world’s largest company, sufficient capital as a startup is often a good strategy,” he said.
The fitness tracker produced by the Boston-based company is popular with professional athletes. Whoop is the official wearable of the NFL Players Association, and it is also being used by professional athletes like Kansas City Chiefs quarterback and two-time NFL Super Bowl champ Patrick Mahomes, and NBA Los Angeles Lakers MVP LeBron James, among others.
Whoop offers an online coach to help people achieve their health and fitness goals. This program is available every hour of the day and every day of the year. A membership with Whoop, combined with its free hardware, is intended to help users change lifestyle habits that don’t serve their goals and gives “actionable feedback on sleep, recovery, and strain.” According to CEO Will Ahmed, Whoop has developed a “proprietary algorithm” to measure strain and recovery. These indicators take into account data such as heart variability.
Kristin Bannon, Investment Director at SoftBank Investment Advisers, will join Whoop’s Board of Directors, as part of the funding round. Commenting on Whoop’s advancement, Kristin Bannon said that “Whoop continues to experience tremendous user growth as they transform human performance, adding new features and products that are focused on enabling their users to lead heal their lives.”
Notably, the latest funding tripled Whoop’s valuation compared to the funding raised before October. The investment in Whoop, which is now being described as the most valuable standalone human performance company in the world, is the latest sign that investors are warming to the wearable and health monitoring technology sector.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
