60 billion, Cristiano Ronaldo invests in a unicorn

A super unicorn has just emerged in the wearable device industry.

Recently, WHOOP announced the completion of a $575 million Series G financing round, with a valuation of $10.1 billion. This is almost three times the $3.6 billion valuation in the previous round in 2021. The list of institutional investors in this round is already quite impressive, including the Qatar Investment Authority, Mubadala, Abbott, and the Mayo Clinic. However, what really made this financing stand out was another list: Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, Rory McIlroy, Virgil van Dijk, and six other top athletes from football, basketball, golf, and other sports participated as individual investors. They are not brand ambassadors; they were long - term users of WHOOP before becoming shareholders.

WHOOP was founded by Will Ahmed in the Harvard Innovation Lab in 2012. Its core product is a wristband without a dial. It does only one thing: collect heart rate variability, sleep quality, exercise strain, and recovery scores 24 hours a day, and tell users whether their bodies are suitable for intense activities or rest today. This extremely focused product positioning has helped WHOOP build a real reputation among athletes and set it on a completely different path from the Apple Watch. The subscription - based model, the accumulation of 24 billion hours of physiological data, and the FDA - certified medical - grade electrocardiogram monitoring support its $10.1 billion valuation.

01 Cristiano Ronaldo's Investment and a Three - fold Valuation Increase

Another super unicorn has emerged.

Recently, WHOOP officially announced the completion of a $575 million Series G financing round, with a valuation fixed at $10.1 billion. What does this number mean? In 2021, WHOOP's valuation was $3.6 billion after the previous financing round. In less than five years, its valuation has almost tripled.

The lead investor is the Collaborative Fund. The institutional lineup spans sovereign funds, medical institutions, and traditional venture capital firms: the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Mubadala Investment Company, Abbott, the Mayo Clinic, Glade Brook, and other established institutions.

However, what really sparked external discussions in this round was the list of individual investors: Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, Rory McIlroy, Reggie Miller, Virgil van Dijk, Mathieu van der Poel, Shane Lowry, along with Irish singer Niall Horan and Dubai influencer Karen Wazen. Nine top athletes and public figures from different sports such as football, basketball, golf, and cycling appeared in a financing document at the same time.

This is not the first time WHOOP has brought top athletes into its shareholder roster, but the density and popularity of this group are significantly higher. Cristiano Ronaldo said directly in a statement: "WHOOP has become one of the most important tools for me to support my long - term health. No other company has created such a powerful and wearable health platform." Behind this statement, there is a detail worth noting. Ronaldo was already a long - term user of WHOOP and had a wearable technology cooperation agreement with Napoli. He had been using the product for a long time before investing.

This is the core difference between WHOOP's individual investors and traditional sports endorsements: they are not brand ambassadors approached by the brand to shoot advertisements. Instead, they first became users and then converted into shareholders. This path has formed a word - of - mouth transmission mechanism in the circle of top athletes. If an athlete you trust is using the product and has also invested in it, it is more persuasive to the target user group who also pay attention to physical performance than any advertisement.

WHOOP was founded by Will Ahmed in Boston in 2012. The core of its product is a wristband without a dial. There is no time display and no message push. It only does one thing: collect physiological data such as heart rate variability (HRV), sleep quality, exercise strain, and recovery scores 24 hours a day, and tell users whether their bodies are suitable for high - intensity training or need rest today. This design choice is itself a positioning statement: WHOOP is not a consumer electronic device and does not compete with the Apple Watch for users. It serves high - intensity sports enthusiasts who take their body data seriously and are willing to pay an annual subscription fee of $239.

This subscription - based business model has produced quite clear figures: In 2025, the annualized bookings run - rate reached $1.1 billion, doubling year - on - year; there are more than 2.5 million global members; and product shipments cover 56 countries. Founder Ahmed emphasized using bookings rather than revenue to measure the business during an interview because the company operates both hardware sales and subscription renewals, and bookings can more accurately reflect the cash flow dynamics. As of this round, WHOOP's total historical financing has exceeded $900 million.

02 From Harvard Squash Team Captain to Silicon Valley Unicorn

In 2012, Will Ahmed was the captain of the Harvard squash team, majoring in government. He was neither an engineer, nor a doctor, nor had he studied computer science. However, he had a problem that had troubled him throughout his college years: why did he go through the same cycle every season, getting stronger with training and then suddenly collapsing, without knowing what was happening to his body.

He began to systematically search the literature. He read more than 500 medical papers and finally wrote a paper on "how to continuously monitor the human physiological state." This paper later became WHOOP's business plan. Ahmed later recalled this experience and said that he never thought about starting a business during his undergraduate years. One thing led to another, and he got more and more involved in the proposition of "continuous human body monitoring" and finally couldn't extricate himself. In 2012, at the age of 22, he officially founded WHOOP in the Harvard Innovation Lab. His co - founders were John Capodilupo, a computer science student at Harvard, and Aurelian Nicolae, a hardware engineer, two people he met on campus whose technical expertise complemented his own.

The early days of the startup were far from smooth. Ahmed sent financing invitations to 143 investors, all of which were rejected. The reasons for rejection were highly consistent: don't make hardware; license existing devices and only focus on algorithms. Ahmed didn't listen. His judgment was that if the accuracy of body data collection was not high enough, even the best algorithms would be useless. To collect truly valuable health data, one must control the sensors and hardware. This judgment was against the trend at that time, but it later became WHOOP's most difficult - to - replicate core barrier. For a long time after its establishment, the company only had a three - month cash reserve, and at its most critical moment, it was only two days away from filing for bankruptcy.

The real turning point came from a channel that Ahmed himself didn't expect.

The first version of the product was officially launched in 2015. Ahmed decided not to target the mass consumer market but to first penetrate the professional athlete circle. His strategy was to bypass the athletes themselves and directly approach their personal coaches because coaches are more willing to try new tools, and if the product is really effective, they will naturally recommend it to the athletes. In this way, LeBron James and Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps became among the earliest users of WHOOP, with user numbers within the first 100. One day, Ahmed was casually watching TV and saw a KIA car advertisement. In a flash, LeBron James was wearing WHOOP on his wrist. At that moment, he realized that things were starting to change. WHOOP didn't pay James to be a brand ambassador; James was wearing it on his own. This detail began to spread by word - of - mouth in the top athlete circle. Rory McIlroy, Virgil van Dijk, Tiger Woods, Aryna Sabalenka... more and more professional athletes began to appear on the user list, not because of advertising but because of peer recommendations.

Ahmed later summarized this strategy in one sentence: "If we can make the top - tier athletes truly benefit from WHOOP, we can build a complete brand around 'performance'." He admitted that he didn't fully realize another benefit of this strategy at that time. Top athletes are a small but extremely willing group to tolerate the early imperfections of the product because they are so eager for the promised benefits. The feedback from these early users helped WHOOP refine the product round by round and also bought time for WHOOP to prove its business model to investors.

After the product established a foothold in the athlete circle, WHOOP began to expand to a wider user group. The U.S. Navy Special Forces became a corporate customer, and the NFL Players Association and Major League Baseball signed cooperation agreements with WHOOP successively. These endorsements further strengthened WHOOP's brand recognition among "serious users." It is not a gadget for ordinary people to record steps but a tool for professionals to manage their bodies. Based on this positioning, WHOOP launched the WHOOP Unite product line for enterprises and institutions, extending its service from sports teams to corporate teams, government agencies, and military units.

It took Ahmed 13 years to transform from the first - generation prototype built by three people in the Harvard Innovation Lab to a global platform covering 56 countries, with more than 2.5 million members and an annualized bookings run - rate of $1.1 billion. During this period, WHOOP completed seven rounds of financing, and its valuation increased from zero to $10.1 billion. The transformation of Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, and others from initial users to investors in this round is a direct footnote to these 13 years.

03 Where is the Next Trillion - Dollar Track in the Smart Wearable Industry?

The timing of WHOOP's completion of this financing round is not an isolated event in the context of the entire wearable device industry.

Just half a year ago, Finnish smart ring company Oura completed a $900 million financing round, with a valuation of $11 billion. The fact that both companies reached a valuation of over $10 billion at almost the same time points to the same judgment: the story of smart wearable devices has only just begun. The global wearable device market is currently worth about $70 billion and is expected to exceed $150 billion by 2030. However, this number alone does not tell the whole story. What is more worthy of attention is the change in the market structure. In the past decade, the main growth in this track has come from the mass consumer end. Apple, Samsung, and Huawei have captured the vast majority of users with their smart watches. The next wave of growth is shifting from "function stacking" to "data depth" and from selling hardware to selling health services. This shift in direction is the underlying logic that supports the valuations of companies like WHOOP and Oura.

Apple's position in this track is often used as a reference for WHOOP, but the two companies are actually not on the same competitive track. The core user needs of the Apple Watch are notifications, payments, and map navigation, and health tracking is an additional function. WHOOP users buy the health data itself, and the device has no other functions. This difference determines that the user stickiness of the two types of products is completely different. The driving force for Apple Watch users to upgrade to new models is a faster processor and a better - looking screen. The driving force for WHOOP users to renew their subscriptions is the personal health baseline data they have accumulated on this platform for months or even years. Changing the device would mean losing the reference value of this data. This migration cost formed by data accumulation is WHOOP's real moat, not sensor accuracy or algorithms.

The value of data accumulation is further magnified after the intervention of AI. WHOOP has currently accumulated more than 24 billion hours of human physiological monitoring data, a figure that few similar companies in the world can match. When AI models need real, high - frequency, and long - term human data to train personalized health prediction models, whoever has this database will have the entry ticket for the next round of competition. Ahmed has mentioned on multiple occasions that WHOOP's long - term goal is to become a "personal health operating system," which means not only telling users their recovery scores today but also providing truly personalized health intervention suggestions based on personal historical data. The prerequisite for achieving this goal is precisely the volume and quality of data, which is what WHOOP has been doing in the past 13 years.

Medicalization is another emerging path in this track. The transformation of wearable devices from "fitness tools" to "medical devices" is not a new topic, but so far, only a few companies have truly crossed the regulatory threshold. WHOOP MG's FDA certification for medical - grade electrocardiogram and blood pressure monitoring is a substantial progress in this direction. The pricing logic of medical devices is completely different from that of consumer electronics. Once wearable data can be incorporated into the clinical decision - making process and included in the insurance compensation system, the ceiling of the entire business model will be redefined. The investment of Abbott and the Mayo Clinic is more like seizing a key node on this path rather than a pure financial investment. Abbott has proven the commercial feasibility of medical - grade wearables in the continuous glucose monitor field, and the clinical endorsement of the Mayo Clinic can help WHOOP complete the verification process in the medical system. The participation of these two institutions means that WHOOP is not groping in the dark on the medicalization path.

The logic of geographical expansion runs parallel to medicalization. Although the directions are different, both are expanding WHOOP's market boundaries. Currently, WHOOP's main user base is concentrated in North America. Europe and the Asia - Pacific region are markets that have started to be penetrated but are far from saturated, and the Middle East is the new battlefield that WHOOP is focusing on after this financing round. The concentration of high - net - worth individuals, the rapid awakening of health awareness, and the government's initiative to promote digital health infrastructure all exist in the Gulf region at the same time. This is the logic behind WHOOP's establishment of a research laboratory in Doha and its cooperation with Al Nassr Club. Ahmed has clearly stated that the goal of IPO is to be achieved within 12 to 24 months, and the progress of global expansion will directly affect whether the valuation narrative at that time can hold.

From a longer - term perspective, the smart wearable track is undergoing a qualitative change from a tool to a platform. The first - generation wearable devices solved the problem of "recording," telling users what happened. The second - generation solves the problem of "analysis," telling users what the data means. The real opportunity lies in the third - generation, which is to provide "action suggestions" based on personal data and let the device truly influence users' daily decisions. This evolutionary direction requires not better sensors but sufficient long - term data accumulation, in - depth algorithm iteration, and strong user trust. The fact that Cristiano Ronaldo and others are willing to invest their money is a bet on this very thing.

This article is from the WeChat official account “Rongzhong Finance” (ID: thecapital), author: Lv Jingzhi, published by 36Kr with authorization.