Boston-based wearables company Whoop just closed a Series E funding round of $100 million, bringing the start-up's total fundraising to more than $200 million and its valuation to $1.2 billion since its founding in 2012. The company offers a monthly subscription to a data analytics platform that comes with a fitness tracking wristband. Investors in the Series E round include multiple venture capital firms as well as professional athletes Eli Manning and Patrick Mahomes after Whoop partnered with the NFL in August of 2020 to offer its wearable to football players.
Whoop's patent filings include fourteen (14) documents covering activity recognition, sleep detection, and workout recovery calculation. This puts it ahead of other fitness tracking wearables companies such as Oura, which has seven (7) documents in the sector and raised $28 million in Series B funding in March of 2020. However, Oura has been garnering much more press recently with partnerships with the NBA, WNBA, NASCAR, and UFC as well as helping with COVID-19 detection studies. It's rare for companies to pursue Series E funding, but Whoop may have used the strength of its patent portfolio to bolster investor confidence. You can view all of the company's published filings as well as its competitors on the Magic Number® Consumer Sleep Patent Radian®.
