Tag: Wearables

Posted on

Oura’s gen-3 fitness ring arrives with improved sensors, custom content

In early 2017, Motiv captured the tech press’ imagination by demonstrating how wearable fitness tracking could live beyond the wrist. Ultimately, however, exercise wasn’t enough for the company, which quickly looked to expanding into things like biometric device unlock. For Oura, on the other hand, health has been more than enough.

In fact, the company had a banner 2020, as organizations sought an outside the box solution amid the pandemic. The startup demonstrated how its various health metrics could assist in early detection of COVID-19 and other health conditions, and some of the U.S.’s biggest sports organizations happily lined up, including, NBA, WNBA, World Surf League, USA Surfing + World Surf League, Red Bull Racing, Seattle Mariners, UFC and NASCAR.

Image Credits: Oura

Over the course of its life, Oura notes that it has sold “hundreds of thousands” of rings. Not earthshattering numbers in the world of consumer electronics, but an impressive uptick for a hardware startup — particularly in a market oversaturated with various smartwatches and fitness bands.

Oura has succeeded on the strength of cramming an impressive number of sensors into a discrete package, offering some quality insights into things like workouts and sleep. The new gen-3 ring reaffirms the company’s commitment to its bread and butter — not surprisingly, of course, in an era when nearly all wearable makers are making a big play for health and wellness.

The top-line feature here is 24/7 health tracking, courtesy, in part, of a daytime/live heart monitoring. Other major features include improved temperature monitoring, better sleep tracking and period prediction. Of the latter, the company writes:

Oura accurately predicts your next period 30 days in advance and alerts you 6 days before it starts, so you’re always prepared. Instead of relying solely on the calendar method, Oura takes a more holistic approach to predicting your period as your body temperature naturally changes throughout your menstrual cycle. While most tracking methods assume your cycle is the same every month, Oura’s Period Prediction adapts its predictions as your cycle changes.

The news also finds the company taking a much deeper dip into workout content, joining the likes of Apple, Fitbit and Samsung. Currently listed as “coming soon,” the library will launch with more than 50 video and audio sessions, focused on workouts, meditation, sleep and breathing.

Image Credits: Oura

“We’ll keep expanding that library. Both educational content — understanding the effects of things like caffeine and sleep — and also guided content,” CEO Harpreet Rai tells TechCrunch. “In the beginning, you’ll see a lot of meditation, sleep sounds. We’ve expanded that library tremendously. You’ll see more and more coming there. It’s a one-stop shop for your health.”

Those videos, along with deeper health insight, will be available through a newly launched $6/month Oura Membership service.

“If you look at Peloton, Tonal, Tempo, Hydro and all of your connected fitness, it’s hardware plus subscription,” says Rai. “You’ve seen wearables go that way, too. Do I think over time, we can go fully subscription model? There may be different ways to finance this stuff — I think you can. We haven’t ruled it out. But we’ve seen more consumers gravitate toward this, because of the total cost of ownership.”

The ring will continue to add new features moving forward, including SpO2 blood oxygen sensing, which is set to arrive at some point next year. The ring itself runs $300 and is up for preorder now. It starts shipping mid-November.

Posted on

Muse’s latest meditation headband is designed to lull wearers back to sleep

Meditation hardware is a tricky thing. Anyone who’s been frustrated in the pursuit of mindfulness has no doubt longed for some way to short circuit — or, at very least, jumpstart — a practice. I quite liked the original Muse headband’s addition to the category — affording an almost gamified approach to focusing (trust me, it’s better than it sounds).

Introduced at CES 2020, the Muse S promised something even more fundamental: better sleep. When I wrote about it at the time, I was still in the very early days of testing it and, frankly, having trouble getting to sleep with a gadget on my head. I wondered aloud whether I would be able to keep it up (spoiler: I wasn’t). Today, the company is introducing a follow-up, the  simply named, Muse S (Gen. 2)

This time out, the product is about staying asleep as much as getting to sleep in the first place. As someone who has more trouble with the former than the latter, I can appreciate this. Certainly it’s been a theme for me during the pandemic — passing out early and waking up for a couple (or several) hours in the middle of the night. Part of me firmly believes that we weren’t wired to sleep through the night.

Muse notes that according to the CDC, more than one-third of U.S. adults don’t get seven hours of sleep a night — and honestly, that sounds low to me. The new Muse utilizes something called Digital Sleeping Pills — an odd choice of a name that uses the band’s EEG readings to deliver sleep content on waking, in an attempt to lull the wearer back to sleep. There are a number of choices there, including:

  • Original, Classic, and Adventure Sleep Stories that have a voice narration of some of your favorite childhood stories & a variety of new original stories
  • Ambient Sleep Soundscapes that offer soothing ambient music and harmonized sounds without a voice narrative
  • Biofeedback Sleep Soundscapes that offer nature sounds and music that respond to biofeedback without a voice narrative
  • Guided Sleep Meditations that have a meditation teacher guide you through a relaxing sleep meditation

The content will also be coming to Gen 1 users via a software update. Beyond this, there are some slight tweaks to the new headband, including improved accuracy and better battery life. Pricing, I think is still a major obstacle here, at $400. I suspect plenty of people would be willing to give a sleep gadget a go at a fraction of that.

Posted on

Apple Watch Series 7 review

The entire smartwatch category had a good Q2, as numbers jumped 27% year over year. That, in turn, was up 20% from a year prior, in spite — or perhaps because of — COVID-19 concerns. The popularity of these devices are the proverbial rising tide, with most of the big players benefiting from an overall increase in adoption.

But one name continues to loom large in a way seldom seen in a fairly mature category. Last quarter, the Apple Watch’s active user base crossed 100 million, according to Counterpoint Research. The company took three of the top four smartwatch spots globally with the Series 6, SE and Series 3, with Samsung managing to sneak into the No. 3 slot with its latest Galaxy Watch Active.

The company has seen competition on the low end of the market, with an influx of sub-$100 devices, but at the premium and mid-range end, Apple continues to be utterly dominate to such a degree that top competitors like Samsung and Google are teaming up to take it on. So, what do you do when you’re Apple? You tweak. You make the screen a bit bigger, you make the charger a bit faster and, most of all, you don’t really mess with a good thing.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Some of the more outlandish rumors swirling around health-related changes proved wrong, as the company instead opted to focus on making some aesthetic changes to the device. The Series 7 marks one of the biggest changes to the device’s design in several generations, and even that isn’t what one might deem a radical departure. In fact, it’s the sort of thing you can walk around with undetected.

If, on the other hand, you’re a daily Apple Watch user, you’ll notice the difference on your wrist immediately. The upgrade from Series 6 to Series 7. The larger model (which we’ll be focusing on for the remainder of this review) bumps up from a 1.78-inch screen (measured diagonally, à la a smartphone) to 1.9 inches. That represents a 20% increase over the Series 6 and a 50% increase over the Series 3, which somehow manages to keep sticking around.

It’s not a radical departure, generation over generation. And certainly something like 12% larger buttons on the calculator aren’t enough to sell anyone on an upgrade. The truth is that the nature of wearables generally prohibits designers from making too radical a design change because the product needs to fit on your body. The earliest smartwatches suffered from large designs that prohibited wearability among a wide swath of users.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Any increase to screen size should be counteracted by a reduction in the surrounding hardware. This is achieved, in part, by a thinning of the bezels, down to 1.7mm. The black border hasn’t gone away entirely here, but it’s noticeably slimmer, even when compared to the Series 6. In spite of this, the company still had to increase the overall size of the case, from 40/44mm to 41/45mm. As someone who’s had some issues with larger smartwatch cases in the past (I’m looking at you, Samsung), I didn’t really notice a difference with the added millimeter here. It feels the same on-wrist and while wearing it to bed. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel fully comfortable wearing a smartwatch to sleep, but your mileage may vary.

Along with the added real estate comes adjustments to the UI that allow for a surprising amount of additional content — again, when dealing with a sub-two-inch screen, it really becomes a game of millimeters. According to the company, apps like Messages are now capable of fitting in more than 50% additional text than on the Series 6. In other cases, where less content is required, that means two larger font sizes added to the mix, so you get, say, bigger buttons on the passcode screen.

The biggest day to day change, however, is the addition of a full QWERTY keyboard for text input, either by tapping or sliding between letters with QuickPath. I’m surprised at how well both worked on the small screen. As soon as you open up the application, an “Apple Watch Keyboard Input” notification will pop up on your connected iPhone, asking if you’d like to input the text on iOS. In most instances, the answer is probably yes. But it’s nice to have the option if, you’re (gasp) going to be away from your phone for a bit.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The new watch features a thicker display crystal, adding some ruggedness. Watches obviously don’t have as much opportunity to shatter as phones, but I have a bad habit of taking turns a little too tightly and smacking my watch on a door jam. Nothing’s shattered yet, but there have been some close calls. This is also the first watch to add dust proofing to the existing WR50 water resistances. At IP6X, the system is completely dust-tight.

The edges of the display curve a touch more, meeting flush with the case, making a bit more of the display visible when viewed from the side. The new Counter watch face, which stretches the numbers along the border, take advantage of this, while the other two new screens — Modular Duo and World Time — use the additional real estate to jam in even more watch complications.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

One of the upshots of a larger case is the ability to fit in a larger battery. Apple won’t say whether it’s actually increased the capacity here, so we’ll have to wait for the inevitable teardown. It seems likely the company bumped the mAh up a bit, though, in a bid to maintain the same battery life as before. Apple promises 18 hours, and indeed, you should be able to make it through a day no problem, in spite of a larger and significantly brighter (70% when inside, per the company) always-on display.

[gallery ids="2216727,2216739,2216733,2216732,2216731,2216730,2216728,2216726,2216725,2216724,2216723,2216721"]

I was hoping the addition of legitimate sleep tracking would have meant a more aggressive approach to battery life, especially as some of the competition are touting multiple days on a single charge. What we do get, at least, is a new USB-C magnetic charger that is 33% faster than the one on the Series 6, giving you an 80% charge in around 45 minutes. What that means in practical terms is a full night’s charge in less than 10 minutes. So if you’re strategic about charging, you can effectively wear it day and night.

The new charger is backward compatible with older Watches, in that it will charge them at their standard speed. In keeping with Apple’s effort to reduce waste, the Series 7 doesn’t ship with a wall adapter, however. But it should work with the USB-C ones you (hopefully) have lying around. The company has some new bands, as well, though the 7 is also, thankfully, compatible with all of the existing ones on Apple’s site.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The sensors are largely unchanged, and the Series 7 sports the same processor and LTE chip as before. 5G for the Series 8, perhaps? The new colors are nice. Apple sent along the Green Aluminum, which is subtler than I’d anticipated. It’s a dark olive color, which is easily mistaken for a dark gray or black in certain lighting. If you want something that pops a bit more, go with the red or blue.

The Series 7 starts at $399 for the 41mm and $429 for the 45mm. Prices go up accordingly based on band type and finish. If you’ve already got the Series 6, it’s a not a huge upgrade. Assuming yours is still working, maybe wait a year or two to see what Apple has up its sleeve in the future, in terms of health and other features. As is, there are enough bits and bobs to keep Apple at the top of the pack.

Posted on

Apple Watch Series 7 arrives October 15, starting at $399

The Apple Watch Series 7 debuted at the big September 14 hardware event, with a vague “fall” release date. Today, the company announced that the popular wearable will go up for preorder this Friday (October 8), with in-store available starting a week later, on the 15th, for customers in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Korea, UAE, UK and US.

The most notable addition here is a display that’s 20% larger than its predecessor, capable of fitting 50% more text. The screen is brighter as well, and fortified by stronger crystal, with the watch now sporting an IP6X rating for dust, coupled with the existing WR50 water rating for swimming. Contrary to rumors, the overall battery life hasn’t improved (rated at 18 hours), but charging is now 33% faster.

Image Credits: Apple

The smartwatch comes in five aluminum different case finish colors, including black, silver, blue, green and (Product) Red. There are three stainless steel colors (silver, graphite and gold) and two titanium. The Apple Watch Series 7 starts at $399, while the SE is available $279. The Series 3 is still available, as well, starting at $199.

Apple continues to dominate global smartwatch marketshare, leading chief competitors like Google and Samsung to combine forces on the Galaxy Watch 4, which leverages both Wear OS and Tizen. Amazon has also been dipping its toes in the wearable waters, but has thus far only focused on fitness bands, offering a more direct competitor to Google-owned Fitbit.

Posted on

Amazon takes on Fitbit with the $80 Halo View

A year after launching its original exercise band, Halo, Amazon just dropped the follow up, Halo View. The company’s not quite ready to go full bore into the smartwatch category just yet, but it clearly has the Google-owned Fitbit brand directly in its sights with the newly announced Halo View.

The device doesn’t quite challenge the low end of the fitness band category currently monopolized by the likes of Huawei, but the $80 price point (which includes a year of the company’s Halo service) is certainly competitive in the mid-tier of the market – particularly among those with built in displays.

The product sports a color AMOLED touch screen, coupled with haptic feedback, designed to react to your activity in real-time. The wearable is waterproof for swimming and sports a week of battery life that can be charged to full in 90 minutes. Built in sensors monitor activity, live work out tracking, sleep and blood oxygen levels.

Amazon Halo View and app

Along with the new device, comes a number of different content features. Halo Fitness takes on the likes of Apple’s Fitness+ with hundreds of built-in video courses from trainers like Michael Hildebrand, Elena Cheung and Elizabeth Andrews. Also new is Halo Nutrition, which is designed to help users create healthier eating habits. All of that is available as part of the Halo software offering. Like Fitness+, real-time fitness metrics captured with the device are displayed in real-time on the screen during Halo Fitness workouts. 

Amazon Halo kitchen

The Halo view will be available in three band colors (with more bands sold separate), “in time for the holidays.” The original Halo notably drew privacy concerns, with Senator Amy Klobuchar noting, “recent reports have raised concerns about the Halo’s access to this extensive personal and private health information. Among publicly available consumer health devices, the Halo appears to collect an unprecedented level of personal information.”

Amazon Fall 2021 Hardware Event

Posted on

Facebook’s wearable glasses can succeed where Google Glass flopped

Ashish Bhatia Contributor
Ashish Bhatia is a clinical associate professor of management and entrepreneurship and the academic director of the B.S. in Business, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at NYU Stern.

Facebook recently announced its highly anticipated wearable sunglasses that can record video from a user’s perspective. Despite many of our legitimately squeamish reactions to this new product, one of Facebook’s decisions in this launch is likely to make it a success where Google Glass failed.

Taking a page from the business school curriculum, Facebook leveraged an effectual approach to its launch by partnering with Ray-Ban — a lesson all new product managers would do well to remember.

To best understand this, we need to first revisit Google Glass. It launched in 2011 as a prototype for only select users. Consistent with Google’s approach with beta launching at the time, these users paid $1,500 for their chance to play and test out what looked and felt like the future.

Despite being named one of Time Magazine’s best inventions of the year, Google Glass was riddled with problems and very much an unfinished product. Many have commented previously on how one of the key failures of Google Glass was that it was a classic example of putting out new technology without a clear use case. What were people to do with Google Glass?

Another important aspect of the Google Glass launch was that the design of the product was done in-house and marketing was carried out by a somewhat unintentional public relations campaign led by co-founder Sergey Brin, seen wearing them everywhere from Silicon Valley to Fashion Week. Effectively, Google was surfing on the wave of its success and offering up a new toy that seemed to be inevitable — but had no clear use.

Fast forward to earlier this month. Facebook launched new wearable sunglasses that are immediately and often compared to Google Glass. The question on everyone’s mind (other than whether the person next to me will be recording me without my permission) is whether Facebook’s attempt will tank like Google Glass. However, the decision to partner with top sunglass maker Ray-Ban to utilize one of the most recognized brands, the Wayfarer glasses, as the actual wearable is likely to make Facebook’s version a success.

While Facebook is more than a decade from its entrepreneurial beginnings, like many large technology companies, it necessarily must explore at the edges of innovation in order to prevent the product or service from making its platforms outdated. This means that many of the product launches that Facebook considers require them to navigate not risky nor unknown situations — but unknowable ones. What’s the difference?

The issue that Facebook and many technology futurists face is what many refer to as Knightian uncertainty. In 1921, Frank Knight published research that emphasized an important difference between risk and uncertainty. For the Big Four technology companies, the risk is the management of revenue to ensure that the market share between Facebook’s ad revenue growth next year continues to outpace Google’s.

Both companies have a track record of revenue growth, so we can utilize some historical data to make fairly decent predictions about the future. The key here is that tools of prediction have strength and thus are leveraged in decision-making.

Now comparing that situation to whether Facebook’s glass will be successful is an entirely different situation. What historical records can we draw from? Will demand be similar to Apple Watch in its first year? Or will it be more like Zune, Microsoft’s attempt at competing with the iPod? The point is that the demand for this product is unknowable, and there is very little value to prediction in unknowable situations — which we can also refer to as Knightian uncertainty.

So why will Facebook be more successful? Because while Facebook is no longer a startup, it leveraged a key entrepreneurial method to improve its chances. Namely, it leveraged an effectual approach to its launch of the Facebook glass by partnering with Ray-Ban.

While Google tried to invent the design of its new glasses — using its imagination about what people wanted — Facebook leveraged a design that already has some certainties around it. When a company or entrepreneur is launching a new product or service, working collaboratively is a key way to gain control of outcomes when predictive tools fail. Effectuation is an entrepreneurial method that encourages entrepreneurs to leverage aspects that are in or can be in their control.

You do this by starting with who you are, what you know and who you know. Instead of trying to predict what people will like in a pair of glasses and instead of learning itself how to market those glasses, Facebook chose to leverage the know-how of the largest player in the market.

Facebook moved forward through the unknowable by finding someone it knew to help it navigate a key uncertainty of its new product. For that reason alone, it has a better chance of success.

Ultimately, new consumer product innovations are incredibly uncertain (not risky), and most will fail. That means that even with Ray-Ban’s partnership, it can easily flop on so many other parameters, but like a good entrepreneur, Facebook has upped its chances by leveraging a key entrepreneurial approach to its product launch — improving its chances of success.

Posted on

Apple Watch Series 7 arrives with a larger, more rugged display

Big day for hardware over at Apple HQ. In addition to all of a pair of new iPads, the company just launched the latest version of the wearable-dominated Apple Watch. As anticipated, the Apple Watch Series 7 marks one of the biggest design changes in the smartwatch’s six year history. The new Watch sports a re-engineered display that’s 20% larger than the Series 6, while “barely effecting” the watch’s size, courtesy of smaller bezels.

The corners are rounded and the display is significantly brighter than the last version. The new screen is able to fit 50% more text than the previous models, and the system features a new text input feature with AI predictions. The glass on the front has been fortified, and the Watch now rates IP6X.

Contrary to rumors, the battery hasn’t been improved this time out. It can, however, charge at around  33% faster, so you can get some quick juice in before sleep tracking.

Apple Watch Series 7 is arriving later this fall, starting at $399. The cases come in five different colors. The Series 3 is sticking around, priced at $279, while the SE runs $279. The new watch will ship with WatchOS 8, which now includes bike tracking.

 

Read more about Apple's Fall 2021 Event on TechCrunch

Posted on

What we expect from next week’s Apple event

We’ve been scouring the latest rumors and leaks and playing all of The Mamas and The Papas songs forward and backward to get the best possible picture of what we’re in store for with next Tuesday’s “California Streaming’” event.

The invites, which went out a week in advance, don’t appear to give the game away here. There was some extremely cool AR trickery, accessible through Safari on mobile, which could point to some fancy camera upgrades, though augmented reality has become a bit of a staple on these invites.

The California Streaming title, meanwhile, seems likely to be more of a nod to the all-virtual nature of the event, rather than anything to do with, say, Apple TV (of course, we’ve been one-more-thinged in the past). And as for that lovely shot of the Sierras — that could well be a nod to macOS, though the company has moved onto Monterey. It seems just as likely to be a reference to the aforementioned title.

Apple’s next event is September 14

The biggest, simplest and most important answer to the question of what to expect is a new iPhone. Last year’s models saw a notable delay due to COVID-19-related supply chain bottlenecking. Supply chain problems have persisted, of course, but by all accounts, the company appears to be back on track with its pre-pandemic release cycle.

The iPhone 12’s biggest upgrade was, of course, the long-awaited addition of 5G. That, coupled with the delay, led Apple to some pretty massive sales quarters amid a broader stalling of the overall mobile market. While other manufacturers have skipped the number out of superstitious concerns, Apple seems firmly on board with iPhone 13 (even as renders of its successor, the iPhone 14 have reportedly already leaked).

Image Credits: Getty Images / Qi Heng/VCG

Recent reports suggest that the iPhone 13 will arrive in four different configurations — much like its predecessor. So: the iPhone 13, 13 Mini, 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. The screen sizes should remain the same: 5.4, 6.1 (x2) and 6.7 inches. A separate report, meanwhile, suggests that we’ll see additional colors, with the full lineup being black, white, blue, purple, pink (rather than green) and Product (Red). But, keep in mind that offering different color availabilities in different markets isn’t entirely out of the question.

Unsurprisingly, camera upgrades appear to be the biggest news here. Word from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is that last year’s Pro Max model specs will graduate to the rest of the line (including, potentially, lidar). A ProRes video mode is said to be following the addition of ProRAW to further advance the handset’s bonafides as a semi-pro video shooting rig. Cinematic Video, meanwhile, is said to bring a Portrait-mode-style effect to video. Kuo has also suggested that the devices will be getting a feature based on the Qualcomm X60 that allows for emergency satellite calls — reportedly only available in select markets.

Of course, the phone will also be getting Apple’s latest chip, the A15, said to be coupled with 120 Hz ProMotion display. Apple could also be bringing an always-on feature to the screen, hopefully with minimal impact on battery life. Looks-wise we anticipate it will be more or less the same as its predecessor, albeit with a somewhat smaller camera notch up front — though not to the point of the fake Ted Lasso iPhone. The camera bump around back, meanwhile, is said to be getting larger, perhaps offering an improved telephoto lens.

Oh, and apparently they’ll be more expensive than the iPhone 12 — clearly not one of the new features Apple is going to be actively promoting.

Image Credits: Apple

The Apple Watch 7 seems destined to be the other big news of the event. Apple’s massively popular wearable is reportedly set to get more massive, with a larger display, resulting in a slightly larger case size, from 40 mm and 44 mm to 41 mm and 45 mm. The overall size won’t be too large a change, however, as the company is said to be reducing its bezels this go-round.

Perhaps the most exciting rumor around the Watch is the addition of significant battery life. That’s long felt like a blind spot for the product, compared to competing smartwatches — particularly after Apple significantly improved sleep tracking. Most aren’t anticipating major new health features for the Watch this outing, which is a bit of a surprise here, given that health and fitness have been a major cornerstone for Apple.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

AirPods 3 seem like a reasonably good bet. The latest version of the company’s entry-level earbuds (and their case) are said to be getting a more Pro-style redesign, along with a new chip that’s designed to improve battery life. Active noise cancelation and replaceable tips are apparently not going to make an appearance to maintain the distinction between the two models.

With the company’s rangewide upgrade to its own silicon chugging along, don’t be surprised if we see a number of new Macs. Rumors suggest a new MacBook Pro, Mac Mini and a larger, 27-inch version of its ARM-powered iMac.

The event kicks off Tuesday, September 14 at 10 a.m. PDT/1 p.m. EDT. We’ll be here, bringing you the news as it arrives.
Read more about Apple's Fall 2021 Event on TechCrunch

Posted on

Sila Nanotechnologies’ battery technology will launch in Whoop wearables

Sila Nanotechnologies next-generation battery technology made its commercial product debut Wednesday in the new Whoop fitness tracker, a milestone that caps a decade of research and development by the Silicon Valley startup all aimed at cracking the code to packing more energy into a cell at a lower cost.

Billions have been spent over the past few years on improving battery chemistry, with different startups aiming to either replace the anode or the cathode with a conversion material, like silicon or even lithium in the case of solid state companies.

Sila Nano’s battery chemistry recipe replaces graphite in a battery cell’s anode with silicon to create a more energy-dense and cheaper battery pack. Other companies, like BASF are focusing on creating a high energy dense cathode. 

While numerous companies are working on a variety of different battery chemistries, they have yet to take over the traditional cell technology found in today’s lithium-ion cells. The Sila battery used in the upcoming Whoop 4.0, the company’s latest health and performance tracker, could be the first time in the last few decades the world has seen a next-generation battery chemistry ship to market. 

“Launching a small fitness tracker doesn’t seem like a big thing, but this is really the first device in the market that proves our breakthrough, and over time, this will scale and lead to the electrification of everything,” Gene Berdichevsky, founder and CEO of Sila Nano, told TechCrunch.

Electric vehicles, and Sila Nano’s role in powering them, is at the top of Berdichevsky’s “electrification of everything” list. And the company has already made headway.

Sila Nano has joint battery ventures with BMW and Daimler to produce batteries containing the company’s silicon-anode technology, with the goal of going to market in the automotive industry by 2025. 

“You can translate this success with Whoop to cars in many ways,” said Berdichevksy. “Today, if you want a really long range vehicle, it better be a pretty big car. The smaller the EV, the shorter the range because there’s nowhere to put the battery. But as our technology advances into the automotive market, you’ll be able to have a city car that has 400 miles of range on it. This is enabling more segments of the auto industry to electrify.” 

Whoop, which earlier this month announced a $200 million raise at a $3.6 billion valuation, is introducing the Whoop 4.0 as a wearable that’s 33% smaller, in large part as a result of Sila’s battery, which has about 17% higher energy density, according to Berdichevsky. Not only does a denser, better battery lead to a smaller wearable, but Whoop was able to add additional features – like a sleep coach with haptic alerts, a pulse oximeter, a skin temperature sensor and a health monitor – without compromising its five-day battery life. 

“One of the key outcomes of enabling a chemistry like ours is it allows you to build things that couldn’t otherwise be built,” said Berdichevsky. 

In Whoop’s case, that’s referring to its new Any-Wear tech that allows the wearable to be integrated into a new line of garments like bands that can collect sensor data from areas including the torso, waist and calf.

It’s not just Sila’s chemistry that’s allowing for a successful product to go to market. It’s the scalability of the product that’s really important. Scalability has been built into Sila’s roadmap from the beginning. 

“One of the things we did very early on is we told our scientists and engineers they could only use global commodity inputs so that we know we can make enough for millions of cars,” said Berdichevsky. “Next we said you had to use only what we call ‘bulk manufacturing’ techniques, and that means you use volumetric reactors rather than planar reactors.”

An easy way to think about the difference in reactor types is through the analogy of making enough food to feed a crowd: A big pot of chili (the volumetric reactor) will go a lot farther than individual pizza pies (planar reactors).

Berdichevsky also told his team that anything they created had to be able to seamlessly drop into any battery factory process, whether that factory is supplying batteries for smartphones, cars or drones. 

Sila Nano has already proven scalability twice, Berdichevsky said. The first time it scaled 100x from lab to pilot, starting with volumetric reactors that were about the size of a liter. Wednesday’s partnership with Whoop marks the second time the company has scaled up 100x, and this time to 5,000 liter reactors. To put that in relative terms, a couple of humans could probably climb into one of those reactors. The next stage of scaling will involve reactors large enough that you could drive a car through, says Berdichevsky, which is fitting given Sila Nano’s goal of scaling up to automotive quantities over the next three years. 

“The reason we’re not in cars today is we have to go scale up 100x to have enough to really deploy in cars, but the material is the same,” said Berdichevsky. “The particles, the powder we make, it’s the same in every one of the scales we’ve made so far.”

Posted on

Women’s health tech brand, Elvie, tops up Series C to $97M

Elvie, the women’s health tech pioneer behind a connected breast pump and smart pelvic floor exerciser, has topped up a Series C which it announced earlier this summer (July) — adding a further £12.7m to bring the total raised to £70 million ($97m).

The 2013-founded, UK-based startup previously raised a $42M Series B in 2019, and a $6M Series A in 2017 — when femtech startups were a lot rarer than they are now. Products designed for (and often by) women have gained a lot of momentum over this period as female-led startups have blazed a trail and shown there’s a sizeable market for femtech — leading investors to slow clock on to the opportunity too.

Analysts now project the femtech industry will become a $50 billion market by 2025.

Elvie says the Series C extension includes funds sponsored by the co-founders of Blume Equity – a PE firm that focuses on the food and health sectors – plus further capital from existing investors IPGL, Hiro Capital and Westerly Winds.

In July, when it announced the earlier ($80M) tranche of the raise, Elvie said the Series C was led by BGF and BlackRock alongside existing investors including Octopus Ventures.

The Series C will be used to drive for more growth through geographical expansion (including entering new markets) and diversifying its product portfolio to target other “key stages” in women’s lives, it said.

That means it’ll be splashing out on R&D to support product development — connected hardware that blends physical gadgetry with software still looks to be a strong focus — and also on strengthening its ops and infrastructure to prep for further scale.

Elvie sells four products at this stage: Its connected kegel trainer, and a wearable breast pump (plus two non-electric pumps).

Where the company goes next in terms of product will be an interesting one to watch.

Commenting in a statement, Tania Boler, CEO and founder, said: “Elvie is ready for the next phase of our growth. We have already revolutionized the categories we operate in, but we know that there is vast untapped potential to create better technology products and services for women in new areas.”

She added that Elvie’s goal is to create “the go-to destination for women’s health at all life stages” — selling “sophisticated, accurate and personalised solutions” to its target female consumer.

Elvie doesn’t break out product sales but it told us its pump business has doubled in the US over the last 12 months — adding that they are the highest single breast pump SKU revenue driver on Amazon in the US.

The company also touts “strong” growth for its European business — at 139% YoY. While, in the UK market, it says it’s seen a further +31% growth YoY over the last 12 months.

Femtech’s billion-dollar year