UltraHuman Raises $17.5M for Glucose Tracker | Wearable Tech News

Ultrahuman Secures $17.5 Million in Series B Funding

Ultrahuman, a fitness platform, has announced the successful completion of a $17.5 million Series B funding round. The investment was led by Alpha Wave Incubation, with participation from Steadview Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Ventures, and iSeed fund managed by Utsav Somani.

Investor Participation

The Bangalore-based startup’s Series B round also saw contributions from a number of prominent founders and angel investors. These include Scott Shleifer of Tiger Global, Deepinder Goyal, CEO of Zomato, Kunal Shah, CEO of Cred, and Gaurav Munjal and Romain Saini, the CEO and co-founders of unacademy. This latest funding brings the total amount raised by the company to $25 million.

Focus on Metabolic Health Monitoring

Founded in 2019, Ultrahuman initially offered a range of fitness and wellness features, such as home workout videos, mindfulness exercises, sleep guidance, and heart rate tracking through integration with wearables like the Apple Watch. However, the company’s newest offering represents a significant innovation – a system for monitoring metabolic activity by tracking glucose levels, or blood sugar.

Addressing a Significant Health Need

Monitoring blood sugar is crucial for individuals with diabetes. However, millions in the U.S. alone are considered prediabetic, exhibiting higher-than-normal glucose levels and facing an increased risk of developing diabetes, often without realizing it. Ultrahuman estimates that over a billion people globally suffer from some form of metabolic health disorder, highlighting the substantial potential market.

Sustained high blood glucose is linked to various health problems, making lifestyle adjustments through diet and exercise essential. These changes can lower elevated glucose levels and potentially prevent the progression to full-blown diabetes.

Personalized Approach to Metabolic Fitness

Determining the most effective diet and exercise plan for an individual can be challenging, often requiring extensive trial and error. People’s glucose responses to different foods can vary considerably. These responses are influenced by individual metabolic health, which is itself affected by factors like microbiome diversity, stress levels, time of day, and food quality.

Given the highly personalized nature of metabolic health, continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) holds considerable promise, provided it is accessible and affordable. Ultrahuman is aiming to productize this practice for fitness enthusiasts.

Introducing "Cyborg": A Wearable Glucose Tracker

Ultrahuman launched its first device, branded “Cyborg,” in beta in June. The system comprises a wearable skin patch and a subscription service. The patch extracts glucose from interstitial fluid beneath the skin, transmitting the data to a companion app for analysis and visualization, as explained by founder and CEO Mohit Kumar.

How Cyborg Works

The patch continuously tracks blood glucose levels throughout the day – during eating, exercise, and sleep. The app then uses this data to provide personalized “nudges” to help users “optimize your lifestyle,” such as alerting them to high glucose levels and suggesting exercise to lower them.

This continuous monitoring could provide valuable feedback to individuals, even those who enjoy less healthy foods, revealing how their bodies respond to different dietary choices.

Technology and Accuracy

According to Kumar, the wearable utilizes medical-grade sensors that have been employed in sports technology for the past 6-7 years, achieving reasonable accuracy levels. The sensor is applied directly to the skin.

Ultrahuman is now positioning itself as a “metabolic fitness platform,” emphasizing its new glucose tracking product, which currently remains in closed beta.

Future Plans and Availability

The startup is currently maintaining a waitlist for sign-ups while refining the technology. Ultrahuman reports “thousands” of people have signed up, with a 60% week-over-week growth in registrations. Wider availability is planned for “early 2022.”

Part of the Series B funding will be allocated to improving the accuracy of glucose biomarkers before the full product launch. The team is also exploring alternative form factors and sensor types to enhance accuracy and extend the sensor’s duration beyond the current two weeks.

Expanding Biomarker Tracking

Kumar also mentioned plans to incorporate additional biomarkers, such as heart-rate variability (HRV), sleep zones, and respiratory rate, to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the interplay between metabolic health, recovery, and sleep.

Ultrahuman chose to focus on glucose tracking as a key biomarker because it can serve as an indicator of various fitness and wellness issues, offering a potentially valuable measure of individual health.

Glucose levels are affected by exercise, sleep, stress, and food, allowing Ultrahuman to provide lifestyle recommendations across multiple areas. The system is also highly personalized, adapting to each individual’s unique response.

Personalized Insights and Recommendations

The platform can help users identify beneficial dietary adjustments, pinpointing foods that elicit a “healthy metabolic response” versus those requiring “optimization.” It can also suggest optimal meal timing based on individual glucose consumption rates. Furthermore, it can provide guidance on pre-exercise fueling and optimizing the last meal of the day for improved sleep.

If Ultrahuman’s Cyborg delivers on its promises, it could represent a significant advancement in the quantified-self movement, offering a simple, wearable solution for continuous glucose monitoring and personalized health insights.

Pricing and Accessibility

However, the initial pricing may limit accessibility. Currently, early adopters in the closed beta pay $80 per month for the subscription service. The company intends to add more features and premium services rather than reducing the price. The broader socioeconomic factors of affording a healthy diet and sufficient leisure time for exercise remain challenges that a wearable alone cannot solve.

This report was updated to correct the spelling of Scott Shleifer’s surname