61% of cats in the United States are overweight. It is the cats that dash around the house in the small hours, while their owners are kept wide awake. Rewild uses a collar that can "make decisions on its own", enabling cats to complete hunting activities at home.
Shenzhen Rewild Tech Co., Ltd. (brand Rewild) has developed a smart pet hardware system centered on a motion-enabled cat collar: the collar independently determines when to emit sounds and which toy to drive based on the cat's real-time status, allowing the cat to complete chasing and hunting activities at home, and aggregates the daily data of exercise, feeding, water consumption and sleep into a daily report. The project has completed prototype verification and patent submission, and is currently seeking angel round financing with a planned fundraising of 1.2 million RMB.
Pain points: owners' sleep, and medical bills after cats get sick
The first problem cat owners encounter is not their cats' health, but their own sleep. Cats have dynamic sleep rhythms, and many cats can align their schedules with their owners on the premise that they have consumed enough energy during the day. A cat that sleeps for more than ten hours and does not do any real physical activity during the day will sleep very lightly at night, leading to the well-known behavior of running wildly around the house, scratching doors and frequently waking up at 2 or 3 a.m. On the contrary, cats that get enough chasing and play during the day stay quiet at night and wake up far less often. Most electric toys on the market move at a fixed rhythm, and cats can figure out the pattern in just two or three days, after which the toys are left unused, the cats still sleep through the day and make trouble at night.
The second pain point is cost. Cats with long-term insufficient exercise will gain weight, followed by diabetes, joint problems and urinary system issues. In the United States, an emergency visit for a cat with urinary tract blockage usually costs thousands of dollars, and diabetic cats require lifelong medication and regular testing; a single hospitalization in a first-tier Chinese city also costs several thousand yuan. Most owners do not pay close attention to their cats' weight on a daily basis, but they will immediately realize that ensuring their cats get enough daily exercise is the cheapest form of prevention when faced with hospital bills.
In overseas markets, cat health itself has become a mainstream consumer topic. A 2024 survey by the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention (APOP) in the United States shows that about 61% of American cats are overweight or obese; the number of pets insured by North American pet insurance providers has exceeded 6 million (NAPHIA 2024), and insurance companies have begun to cooperate with wearable devices to implement data-based pricing. Overseas cat owners are willing to pay not only for "no disturbance at night", but also for the long-term value of "cats getting enough exercise and needing fewer hospital visits", which is the direct reason why Rewild chose to launch its product first in overseas markets.
Existing smart feeders, water fountains and monitoring collars have already synced data to mobile phones, but these devices only record data and do not intervene. Owners only get a data report, and they still have to take action themselves to make their cats move and keep the house quiet at night. Rewild is targeting exactly this unmet gap.
Solution: Third-generation smart pet home system, with the cat as the core hub
Rewild divides smart pet hardware into three generations with a single clear criterion: what acts as the core hub. The first generation refers to powered devices, including moving toys and feeders that dispense food at fixed times, with all rules pre-programmed into the circuit board. The second generation refers to internet-connected devices, which add an App to the same hardware products, so that people can remotely trigger actions and check statuses, with humans acting as the hub; feeders, water fountains and litter boxes can already display their records side by side in one App, but the devices do not recognize each other, and none of them take the initiative to intervene. The third generation refers to a connected network: one motion collar represents the cat, and all the toys, feeders, water fountains and cat beds in the home act according to the cat's current status, with the cat as the core hub. What Rewild develops is the collar in the third-generation system, which is the hub itself.
The collar has a built-in accelerometer that continuously monitors the cat's activity level. When the cat stays still for longer than the set duration, the collar first makes the toy emit the sound of a prey, such as a dog bark, bird chirp, mouse squeak, insect buzz or cat meow; once the collar detects that the cat lifts its head and stands up, the toy starts moving immediately, and the cat will instinctively dash out to chase it. If the cat does not respond, the system will try another sound until it finds the sound that interests the cat, and each cat has an independent data set. The back-end system counts the response rate of this specific cat to each sound based on whether the cat gets up after each trigger, and gradually prioritizes the sounds that the cat reacts to. This rhythm of "emitting sound first then driving movement, with short active periods and long intervals" is derived from observations of cats' hunting behavior, designed to prevent cats from getting accustomed to the toys. The whole process requires no human participation: the collar perceives the situation, makes decisions and commands the physical devices to execute actions on its own, and the team defines it as an embodied intelligent agent that grows alongside the cat. The next step is to introduce strategy learning based on historical feedback on the back end, so that the collar can adjust the selection of sounds, toys and time periods according to the actual reaction of each cat.
The nodes are not completely new products, but common off-the-shelf cat toys such as teaser wands, bouncing balls and spinning disks that are refitted with a self-developed mainboard, which communicates with the collar through an open Bluetooth protocol. The nodes do not require manual configuration, and are automatically recognized when the collar comes within range; the total cost of a single node is 20 to 30 RMB, eliminating the cost of mold opening, and third-party hardware can be connected to the system simply by replacing its mainboard. This forms an ecosystem layered according to the cat's life activities: the movement layer consisting of toys and sound-emitting nodes has already been completed; the feeding layer is the feeding node that dispenses food based on hunting results, the excretion layer is the weighing plate under the cat litter box, and the sleeping layer is the millimeter-wave radar in the cat bed, all of which are included in the second-generation node plan. Each additional node allows the collar to learn more about the cat, adding a new entry to the daily report; the data of exercise, feeding, water consumption and sleep will eventually be aggregated into a "Hunter Index" that is generated once a day.
This is also the basis for Rewild to judge where the next round of competition lies: the second-generation system competes on individual functions, such as which feeder is easier to use; the third-generation system competes on the whole ecosystem, namely which set of devices can recognize the cat mutually. After users buy the first product, the optimal choice for every subsequent new cat product will be within the same ecosystem, and switching to another brand means losing all the linkage functions and accumulated data. No one has occupied the position of the core hub yet, and Rewild's strategy is to develop the collar and open the protocol, so that traditional manufacturers can connect to the system as long as they adapt to the protocol. Around this structure, the team has submitted 2 invention patents and 2 utility model patents to the China National Intellectual Property Administration in September 2026, covering the multi-node motion incentive method, sound-enabled controlled power supply node and its structure, and the structure of the collar main unit; the fifth invention patent (feeding based on hunting results) has been fully drafted.
Business model and progress: Overseas first launch, with product sets as the entry point
Rewild takes product sets as the entry point: one collar paired with 5 to 6 toy nodes, priced at 199 to 269 US dollars overseas, with a total material cost of about 230 RMB, and a gross profit margin of about 65% after deducting logistics, packaging and payment fees. After that, 2 to 3 new nodes will be launched every quarter, priced at 29 to 49 US dollars as the repurchase layer. The daily report and Hunter Index are provided through a subscription model, costing 9.9 US dollars per month, with the first 6 months free. Based on the open toy protocol, after the nodes modified by creators reach a certain pre-order volume, the platform will arrange mold opening and production, and the platform will share revenue with the creators. In the longer term, the business will extend to the insurance sector: the more exercise a cat gets, the lower the insurance premium will be. Rewild will only act as the data provider, and there are already precedents overseas where Purina and Tractive have cooperated with insurance companies respectively.
The target users are cat owners from middle and high-income families overseas, and the first launch markets are the United States and Europe. The channel strategy is to drive traffic through short video content and product sampling for influencers, launch the product on Kickstarter first, complete transactions on the official independent website, and enter Amazon in the second year. The team judges that the domestic market is sensitive to the price of a set of cat hardware products worth more than 400 RMB, while overseas markets have stronger willingness to pay for the demand of "keeping cats healthy", so the overseas market is prioritized.
The project is currently at the stage where prototype verification is completed, and preparations for certification and the first batch of trial production are underway. The collar and 7 types of toy nodes have all been fully tested, the firmware, App, back-end and cloud system are all independently developed, and the daily report function has been launched; the official website, independent store and mall have been built and open for pre-orders. The company was registered in Shenzhen in 2026, with a core team of 6 people covering hardware, structure, firmware, back-end, full-stack development and product: founder Liu Ce previously engaged in the development of smart hardware and AI interaction systems, hardware engineer Liu Guangming is responsible for circuit design and mass production, the structural engineer returned to China from Sweden to join the team and is responsible for the shell and mass production structure of the collar and nodes, and there is another full-stack engineer responsible for App and cloud system development.
This round of financing is planned to raise 1.2 million RMB in exchange for 10% equity, and the funds will be mainly used for overseas certifications (FCC, CE, etc.), mold opening for the collar and power nodes, small-batch trial production of 300 sets, data collection from 50 real households, and overseas operation. The team hopes to connect with early-stage investors who focus on consumer hardware, pet industry and embodied intelligence tracks, as well as institutions with overseas crowdfunding experience, and offline demonstrations with physical prototypes are welcome.