Wearables market accelerates
WHOOP closed a $575 million funding round at about a $10.1 billion valuation while Google teased a new fitness/health wearable — signaling major investment and product push in pro-grade biometric tools. That means more advanced recovery, workload and sleep data will be available to athletes and organizations. (arabnews.com) (cnet.com)
Series G was led by Collaborative Fund and included sovereign and institutional backers such as the Qatar Investment Authority and Mubadala, plus strategic participants from Abbott and the Mayo Clinic and athlete investors including Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James and Rory McIlroy. (businesswire.com) WHOOP said its membership has climbed past 2.5 million users globally and reported 2025 bookings growth of roughly 103% year-over-year. (gadgetsandwearables.com) The company told investors the new capital will accelerate its global health-platform expansion, fund additional international R&D (including plans reported for a Middle East lab), and executives signaled a path toward an eventual IPO. (businesswire.com) The Google-linked teaser came in a 15-second clip from Stephen Curry that shows a gray-and-orange, apparently screenless wrist band and the on-screen line “A new relationship with your health coming soon,” ending on a Google logo. (cnet.com) Curry was named Google’s “Performance Advisor” in a multi‑year collaboration announced at Google’s event last year, and the company says he has been working directly with teams across Google Health, Pixel and Cloud on product and algorithm development. (blog.google) Reporting from Bloomberg and device outlets describes the item as a screenless Fitbit-style fitness band under development by Google to compete with companies focused on subscription-first, pro‑grade biometric trackers, with Google having confirmed new Fitbit hardware will arrive in 2026. (bloomberg.com)
