WHOOP, the Boston-based maker of the eponymous $500 wearable device that measures body strain, announced on Tuesday the completion of a $25 million Series C round of financing that included participation from a long list of backers and individual investors.
The round was led by UAE71 Capital with participation from the National Football League Players Association, Durant Company, Thursday Ventures and existing investors including Two Sigma Ventures, Accomplice, Mousse Partners, Promus Ventures and NextView Ventures.
Individual participants such as David Stern, National Basketball Association commissioner emeritus; Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter; Russell Okung, offensive tackle for the Los Angeles Chargers of the National Football League; Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab, also contributed to the round.
As part of the funding announcement, the company made some additions to its staff and board. First, Antonio Bertone is joining the WHOOP management team as chief marketing officer, a role he previously held at PUMA. Second, Stern and AG Gangadhar (a former head of engineering at Uber and investor through Thursday Ventures) will stay as advisors, while Negroponte of MIT Media Lab will join the company’s board of directors.
The company will use the money to accelerate global scale and international expansion of its human performance technology across the elite and consumer markets.
In 2017, WHOOP was approved for in-game use by Major League Baseball, landed a partnership as the official recovery wearable of the National Football League Players Association, became the go-to performance optimization system for many NBA stars - including LeBron James - and continued its rapid expansion with collegiate teams such as Duke University Men’s Basketball.
"We are at a unique moment in time in that humans are just now discovering what allows them to perform at the highest level," said Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WHOOP, in a statement. "Our mission at WHOOP remains focused on unlocking human performance. We welcome our new and returning investors who see the massive opportunity to bring our human performance technology to the world."
