Whoop, the US-based developer of a performance optimisation system for athletes, has raised $25m in a series C round that included labour organisation National Football League Players Association.
The round was led by investment firm UAE71 Capital, with further commitments from Durant Company, Thursday Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, Accomplice, Mousse Partners, Promus Ventures, NextView Ventures and assorted private investors.
Founded in 2011, Whoop has developed a wearable device worn on the wrist that tracks the performance, strain, recovery and sleep of professional athletes. The data is collected by an analytics platform that provides personalised insights into how to increase performance.
The technology has been approved for in-game use by US professional baseball federation Major League Baseball, and Whoop has also begun targeting the consumer market.
Whoop was founded by then-Harvard University student Will Ahmed out of the Harvard Innovation Lab in 2011. It was originally known as My Bobo before rebranding to Bobo Analytics and eventually settling on its current name in 2014.
The series C capital will allow the company to accelerate its global expansion activities, focusing both on the consumer and the professional athlete markets.
Whoop has hired Antonio Bertone as chief marketing officer and added one of the private investors in the round, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s research laboratory MIT Media Lab, to its board of directors.
The round brought Whoop’s overall funding to almost $50m. IT services firm Infosys invested $3m in the company in December 2015 to close its series B round at $12m.
Two Sigma Ventures, Mousse Partners, Accomplice, Promus Ventures, Valley Oak Investments and NextView Ventures had supplied the initial $9m three months before. Whoop had previously secured $3.4m in 2013 and $6m in 2014, according to securities filings.