Eight Sleep Raises $100M for AI-Powered Sleep Tech Expansion
▼ Summary
– Roughly one in three U.S. adults experiences insufficient sleep, fueling demand for sleep monitoring and enhancement tools.
– Eight Sleep raised $100 million in new funding, bringing its total funding to approximately $260 million and doubling its valuation since the last round.
– The company’s flagship product, Pod, is a smart mattress that tracks sleep metrics and automatically adjusts temperature, elevation, and firmness to improve sleep quality.
– Eight Sleep is expanding into the medical sector with features like Health Check, which monitors cardiovascular and respiratory patterns with high accuracy, and is pursuing FDA approval.
– The company prioritizes data privacy by encrypting all information, complying with regulations like GDPR and CCPA, and avoiding the use of microphones or wearables.
With millions of adults struggling to get adequate rest, the demand for advanced sleep technology continues to grow. Eight Sleep, a New York-based startup, has secured a $100 million funding round to expand its AI-powered sleep solutions. Investors in this round include HSG, Valor Equity Partners, Founders Fund, Y Combinator, and notable figures like Ferrari F1 driver Charles Leclerc and McLaren F1 CEO Zak Brown.
This latest injection of capital brings the company’s total funding to approximately $260 million. Since its previous Series C round in 2021, which valued the company at $500 million, Eight Sleep has seen its valuation double. According to co-founder and CMO Alexandra Zatarain, the company is now approaching unicorn status. She emphasized that continued growth in AI development, international expansion, and targeted health interventions will naturally lead to that milestone.
The company’s flagship product, the Pod, is a smart mattress that uses integrated software and artificial intelligence to monitor sleep stages, heart rate, breathing, and movement. It responds by automatically adjusting temperature, elevation, and firmness throughout the night. The system can even detect snoring and gently raise the head of the bed to alleviate it.
Since the Pod’s launch in 2019, Eight Sleep has generated more than $500 million in sales and expanded its revenue tenfold. The company has also collected over one billion hours of sleep data, which fuels its increasingly sophisticated algorithms.
With just over 100 employees, the company is now introducing its Sleep Agent platform. This AI-driven system uses large language models to create digital twins for users, enabling highly personalized sleep optimization. The goal is to shift from passive tracking to proactive, tailored interventions that improve nightly recovery.
The sleep technology market is crowded, with competition coming from wearables like Oura, Fitbit, and Apple Watch, as well as medical device makers such as ResMed and smart bed manufacturers like Sleep Number. Eight Sleep differentiates itself with its Autopilot feature, which builds a personalized sleep blueprint from the first night and continuously adapts to factors like travel, illness, or seasonal changes, all while operating independently on each side of the bed.
A significant portion of the new funding will support expansion into the medical sector. The Pod’s Health Check function monitors cardiovascular and respiratory patterns with up to 99% accuracy, all without requiring wearables. Zatarain clarified that while the system isn’t meant to replace doctors, it provides high-accuracy nightly monitoring that can help users detect health trends early.
The company has also launched Hot Flash Mode, an AI-powered cooling feature designed to relieve menopause symptoms. It is developing contactless solutions for sleep apnea and pursuing FDA approval to use the Pod’s real-time biometric monitoring for personalized medical interventions.
Currently, Eight Sleep ships to more than 30 countries, including Canada, the UK, EU nations, Australia, Mexico, and the UAE. Plans are now underway to enter the Chinese market, where a growing health-conscious middle class is increasingly prioritizing sleep quality and wellness.
Addressing concerns around data privacy, Zatarain confirmed that all user health data is encrypted, never sold, and kept strictly private. The company complies with GDPR and CCPA regulations and does not use microphones. Instead, biometric sensors are embedded directly into the mattress, offering passive, non-invasive monitoring with high accuracy.
(Source: TechCrunch)
