I feel somewhat obliged at this point to cover WHOOP and Oura events – let me know if you, my dear readers, have grown weary of the topic! But, of course, I’m not here just to give you the facts, but to reflect on what we’ve heard and what the implications of this deal might mean for WHOOP, their competitors, and the world of wearables.
(Oh, if you haven’t heard, I’ve been dubbed the Queen of Wearables now. So, I’ll be donning my tiara and grasping my scepter as I write this article :D I promise this doesn’t mean I’ve moved away from MedTech or forgotten the little people.)
WHOOP last week raised $575 million at a $10.1 billion valuation. The investor roster includes some big name athletes (LeBron James, Cristiano Ronaldo, Rory McIlroy), which has become a fad in recent investing and is also 100% on-brand for WHOOP. Also on-brand, significant investments from the Middle East (Qatar Investment Authority, Mubadala). But what some might have been more surprised by – especially given their pushback on the FDA lately – are the investments made by Abbott and Mayo.
So let’s talk about that.
The last year has been a bit of a roller coaster for WHOOP, at least it seemed so publicly. In July 2025, the FDA sent a warning letter about their Blood Pressure Insights feature. I mentioned at the time that this was probably blocking a raise. It’s basic common sense: trying to do institutional capital raises while an FDA warning hangs over your head is mostly a waste of time. The letter was a real barrier.
But WHOOP didn’t back down. They kept providing the feature and kept building behind the scenes.
In January 2026, the FDA clarified their guidance. Three months later, WHOOP closed a $575 million raise.
What happened in those months between the warning letter and the raise? While everyone was watching the regulatory fight, WHOOP was repositioning itself. They hit a $1.1 billion run rate on bookings in 2025, up 103% year-over-year. They achieved operating cash flow positivity. They increased their offering for the female market and also increased their female customers significantly. By the time institutional investors could actually write checks, WHOOP had increased their value in some pretty significant ways.
The FDA battle gave them time and they used it well.
In Abbott’s statement, they said they bring “deep healthcare expertise, scale, and a track record of health tech innovation” to the investment for WHOOP, and that they share “a commitment to empowering people to take control of their health.” Will Ahmed told TechCrunch the partnership “signals a broader push into health and medical capabilities” with “more to come” on that specific announcement.
That’s what they’ve said publicly. Now, what could this actually mean?
On the surface, this could have started as a defensive play. Dexcom invested in and integrated with Oura in 2024. Abbott has continuous glucose monitors that compete with Dexcom. You could easily read this as Abbott making sure they weren’t left out of the wearables conversation. But I think it’s evolved into something much bigger.
Abbott’s portfolio spans nutrition, diagnostics, and pharmaceuticals. Each division has a clear pathway to benefit from WHOOP data and user access. This is too strategic and too broad to just be playing defense against Dexcom. Abbott’s nutrition division, their diagnostic capabilities, and their pharmaceutical arm are all potential benefactors from this relationship. This is about building a pipeline into consumers who are already primed to optimize their health.
Abbott’s value from WHOOP isn’t in WHOOP becoming a complete medical solution. Abbott needs WHOOP to be the early warning system that identifies when someone needs to pay attention to their health.
Someone wearing WHOOP sees their health markers shifting - energy declining, recovery tanking, stress climbing. WHOOP surfaces that data and alerts them something’s changing. That’s the trigger. From there, people seek solutions: supplements, nutrition optimization, hormones, clinical monitoring. In the “longevity” space, which is really overall healthy living and optimization, we see this happening a lot: women dealing with perimenopause, a real surge in rheumatological conditions, all sorts of new ways to optimize health! All of that feeds directly into nutrition, supplements, prescription drugs, and medical devices. Abbott is positioned to capture that entire value chain.
WHOOP identifies the problem. Abbott solves it. And that partnership could be very interesting to watch.
Mayo Clinic participated in the round and said nothing about it.
Mayo Ventures manages 179 or more investments across Healthcare IT, Disease Self Management, and Wearable Technology. They’re an active investor as a health system with a specific mission: clinical research, patient care, and advancing medicine.
What WHOOP offers Mayo is probably three things.
24 billion hours of physiological data is an extraordinary research asset.
WHOOP Unite, their enterprise product launched in 2022, allows healthcare organizations to monitor employee or patient wellness at scale. It provides aggregate data analytics and program management capabilities essentially turning WHOOP’s continuous biometric data into actionable insights for health systems. That offers Mayo a direct pathway into health system workflows.
WHOOP’s push toward medical-grade validation (the ECG clearance, the Advanced Labs blood testing, the regulatory engagement) aligns with Mayo’s credibility requirements in a way pure consumer wellness products don’t.
Mayo is always looking for new ways to commercialize research and generate revenue. A wearable platform that generates continuous clinical-grade data and feeds directly into health system workflows could be valuable to that mission.
There’s also the diversification angle. Mayo is exploring different wearable partnerships (including some Oura research partnerships). They’re not betting everything on one horse. They’re positioning optionality. That’s what you do when you’re not sure which platform will win, but you’re confident continuous biometric data will matter to healthcare.
WHOOP and Oura have recognized their value as gatekeepers. In the new world of the quantifiable self, these platforms are becoming the Instagram and TikTok of wearables; the Facebook and YouTube of health consumption. They don’t have to own all the content to be the platform where everyone goes to use it and they can heavily influence what comes next.
Think about what PCPs used to do. They were the first step for all medical decisions. Whether you went to a specialist, what tests you got, what treatment path you took - that was all determined by your primary care doctor’s judgment and referrals. Now imagine WHOOP and Oura in that role. They have the continuous data, they have the user’s attention every single day, and they often know when something’s shifting in your health before you do.
That makes them extremely powerful.
They could redirect users directly to healthtech platforms, specialty devices for more specific monitoring, unlocking new software features (perhaps developed by current biomarker and wearable startups?). They could start building funnels for certain chronic disease states.
They could replace a large chunk of what a PCP currently does.
I think Abbott and Mayo see this coming and decided to be proactive establishing the right relationships with the future gatekeepers now. Where continuous data, not episodic clinic visits, drives medical decisions.
For MedTech and wearables companies and investors, the real question in the future is not about building better technology, but either finding new parts of the patient pathway to engage in or figuring out how you, too, can get into WHOOP’s or Oura’s funnel? Because that’s where the users are going to be and where the next steps will get decided.
This industry is going to have immense change in the next 2 – 5 years and I don’t know exactly where it will end up but it will definitely change who the health gatekeepers are in the future.
Blythe Karow is a strategic management consultant and founder of The Karow Advisory Group. She writes The Device Files, a Substack publication on MedTech strategy, market access, and commercialization.
References
WHOOP raise, investor list, financial milestones, Will Ahmed quote. Marshall, C. “Whoop’s valuation just tripled to $10 billion.” TechCrunch, March 31, 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/31/whoop-valuation-10b-series-g-fundraise/ Supports: $575M Series G at $10.1B valuation, full investor list (athletes, sovereign wealth funds, Abbott, Mayo Clinic), $1.1B bookings run rate up 103% year-over-year, and the Will Ahmed quote about a “broader push into health and medical capabilities.”
WHOOP press release with Abbott’s statement language. WHOOP. “WHOOP Raises $575 Million at $10.1 Billion Valuation to Advance Global Health Platform.” BusinessWire, March 31, 2026. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260331399622/en/WHOOP-Raises-575-Million-at-10.1-Billion-Valuation-to-Advance-Global-Health-Platform Supports: Abbott’s quoted statement about “deep healthcare expertise, scale, and a track record of health tech innovation” and “empowering people to take control of their health,” plus WHOOP’s 24 billion hours of physiological data claim.
FDA July 2025 warning letter on Blood Pressure Insights. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “Warning Letter: WHOOP, Inc.” July 14, 2025. https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/warning-letters/whoop-inc-709755-07142025
FDA January 2026 revised general wellness guidance. Covington & Burling LLP. “FDA Issues Revised Guidance on General Wellness Products.” January 2026. https://www.cov.com/news-and-insights/insights/2026/01/fda-issues-revised-guidance-on-general-wellness-products Supports: the January 2026 FDA shift on blood pressure as a general wellness category.
Dexcom investment in Oura. Dexcom, Inc. “Dexcom and ŌURA Announce Strategic Partnership.” November 19, 2024. https://investors.dexcom.com/news/news-details/2024/Dexcom-and-URA-Announce-Strategic-Partnership/default.aspx Supports: $75M Dexcom investment in Oura Series D and the integration partnership.
WHOOP Unite launch. WHOOP. “WHOOP® Launches WHOOP Unite™: an Industry-Leading Health and Performance Solution for Organizations.” June 2, 2022. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/whoop-launches-whoop-unite-an-industry-leading-health-and-performance-solution-for-organizations-301559973.html
Mayo Clinic Ventures portfolio scale. PitchBook. “Mayo Clinic Ventures investment portfolio.” https://pitchbook.com/profiles/investor/55757-98 Supports: 179+ investments across healthcare IT, disease self-management, and wearable technology.
Mayo Clinic and Oura research collaboration. Oura. “Advancing Human Health with Oura: Bridging Everyday Life and Clinical Care,” The Pulse Blog, January 2026. https://ouraring.com/blog/advancing-health-with-oura/. Mayo Clinic. “A Study of the Oura Ring in Adrenal Disorders.” https://www.mayo.edu/research/clinical-trials/cls-20583546 Supports: Mayo’s research partnerships with Oura.
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