Wearable technology: what’s funding like now?

All funding deals in the wearable technology market over the last 24 months

Below is the table listing all the deals. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the Wearable Technology Market.

Is wearable technology funding actually healthier now?

Yes. Wearable technology funding looks healthier today on most of the things that really matter, even though a surprisingly large share of the money is still going to a handful of companies.

We counted 49 financings in the latest 12-month period, up from 39 in the previous one. The number of companies raising money also increased, from 37 to 44, while the typical disclosed round became much larger.

New-company funding improved at the same time. Fourteen companies received their first financing in our dataset, versus seven a year earlier. The current improvement therefore reaches beyond companies that were already well funded.

The catch is concentration. ŌURA, WHOOP and Even Realities together account for roughly 69% of disclosed current-period capital. So today’s wearable market has become broader and more top-heavy at the same time: more companies are getting checks, while the biggest checks have become enormous.

Metric	Current 12 months	Previous 12 months	Change
Deals	49	39	+25.6%
Unique funded companies	44	37	+18.9%
Disclosed/minimum capital	$2.36B	$788.4M	+198.8%
Median disclosed round	$13.05M	$5.47M	+138.8%
Average disclosed round	$62.0M	$21.9M	+183.0%
First financings	14	7	+100%
First-financing share	28.6%	17.9%	+10.6 pp
Follow-on financings	35	32	+9.4%
Early-stage deal share	57.1%	59.0%	-1.8 pp
Later-stage deal share	26.5%	23.1%	+3.5 pp

Would wearable funding still look strong without the biggest rounds?

Yes. Wearable technology funding still looks clearly stronger today after we strip out the giant checks.

Removing every financing above $50 million leaves $443.5 million of disclosed capital, compared with $281.5 million during the previous 12 months. That is still a 57.6% increase. If we use a $100 million cutoff instead, the current period comes out at $730.3 million, up 76.7%.

The median round points the same way. It rose from $5.47 million to $13.05 million, so one or two giant transactions cannot explain the shift.

The improvement also shows up month by month. The median rolling month went from $26.2 million of disclosed funding to $92.3 million. Current funding was uneven, and the ŌURA month was obviously exceptional, but the normal month became much stronger too.

Concentration has still gone up. The top three deals now make up 69% of disclosed capital, versus 57.1% for the previous period’s top three. Wearable funding genuinely improved underneath the megadeals, while those megadeals made the headline increase look much more spectacular.

Are more wearable startups actually getting funded today?

Yes. Wearable startup funding is reaching more companies today, and the biggest change is among companies entering the funding market for the first time.

First financings doubled from seven to 14, and their share of all deals jumped from 17.9% to 28.6%. More interestingly, these new entrants are receiving much more meaningful checks. The median first financing increased from just $0.76 million to $6.42 million.

They are also younger. The median company receiving its first financing was two years old in the current period, compared with three years previously.

Meanwhile, follow-on activity still grew, just much more slowly. We found 35 follow-on financings compared with 32 a year earlier.

As seen above, this is why the current market feels broader even with so much money concentrated at the top. Established companies did very well, but they did not crowd new startups out of the market.

Financing measure	Current period	Previous period	Change
First financings	14	7	+100%
First-financing share	28.6%	17.9%	+10.6 pp
Disclosed first-financing capital	$101.3M	$6.58M	+1,439%
Median first financing	$6.42M	$0.76M	+745%
Median age at first financing	2 years	3 years	-1 year
Follow-on financings	35	32	+9.4%
Follow-on share	71.4%	82.1%	-10.6 pp
Median follow-on round	$14.54M	$9.0M	+61.6%

Are the same wearable winners still taking most of the money?

Yes. Established wearable companies still take most of the dollars, even while more new companies are getting funded.

Follow-on rounds accounted for roughly $2.25 billion of disclosed capital in the current period. At the later end of the market, Series D+ deals represented only a small fraction of transactions but 65.5% of disclosed funding.

Look at the businesses receiving the largest checks. ŌURA entered its major funding round after saying it had sold more than 5.5 million rings and doubled revenue for a second consecutive year.

WHOOP was even more explicit about its commercial scale. Before its $575 million Series G, the company said it had more than 2.5 million members, grew bookings by 103% in 2025, exited that year at a $1.1 billion bookings run rate and was operating cash-flow positive.

These days, hundreds of millions of dollars are available in wearable technology, but the biggest checks tend to appear after a company has already shown that people use the product at scale.

Are wearable funding rounds getting much bigger now?

Yes. Wearable funding rounds are much bigger these days, and the change runs well below the handful of nine-figure financings.

The clearest shift is at the small end. During the previous period, 44.4% of disclosed rounds were below $5 million. Today, that share is only 18.4%.

The center of the market moved upward. Financings between $5 million and $20 million increased from 27.8% to 44.7% of disclosed deals. Seed rounds became more substantial too, with the median moving from $1.52 million to $5 million.

The top end thickened as well. We counted eight financings of at least $50 million across the $50 million–$100 million and $100 million-plus bands, compared with four previously.

A small experimental check is much less representative of wearable funding now. Companies are more often raising enough money to hire real teams, build inventory, work through manufacturing problems and push products into multiple markets.

Are wearable investors taking more risk now, or only betting big on proven companies?

Wearable investors are taking more risk with young companies while saving their biggest checks for businesses that already have serious traction.

Early-stage deals still make up 57.1% of current activity, barely changed from 59% previously. Seed alone represents 42.9% of deals. Investors have therefore kept funding young wearable companies even as enormous late-stage rounds returned.

The dollars tell a different story. Series D+ captured almost two-thirds of disclosed capital. Series B and Series C rounds also became much larger in our calculations, while later-stage deal share increased only modestly.

That gives the current market a fairly unusual shape. A young company can still get funded, often with a larger starting round than before. Once a company proves that it can sell at scale, the amount of capital available rises dramatically.

We would be much less confident saying investors have simply become “more aggressive” across the board. Their behavior depends heavily on where the company sits in its life cycle.

Which parts of wearable technology are actually gaining momentum?

Connected hearables and smart glasses show some of the cleanest growth in activity today, while smart wearables still dominate the dollars.

Connected hearables increased from three deals to five, and their median financing rose from $6.5 million to $11.5 million. It is a small sample, but both the number of deals and the typical check moved in the same direction.

Smart glasses grew from 12 deals to 15. Their median round actually fell, from $17.55 million to $14.5 million, which makes the increase in activity more interesting: more companies got funded without the category needing ever-larger rounds to produce growth.

Smart wearables remain much bigger. We found 25 financings, up from 21, and the median increased sharply. The dollar figure is much harder to interpret on its own because ŌURA dominates the category’s capital.

Fitness bands appear huge in the table because WHOOP sits there as a single $575 million transaction. With one deal, we would not treat that as evidence of a broad funding wave for fitness bands.

Category	Current deals	Previous deals	Current median	Previous median
Smart Wearables	25	21	$11.6M	$2.09M
Smart Glasses	15	12	$14.5M	$17.55M
Connected Hearables	5	3	$11.5M	$6.5M
Smartwatches	2	1	$12.9M	$0.39M
XR Headsets	1	2	—	$9.77M
Fitness Bands	1	0	$575M	—
All wearable technology	49	39	$13.05M	$5.47M

Is smart glasses funding really taking off now?

Yes. Smart glasses funding looks meaningfully stronger now because more companies are raising money even though the typical round has not increased.

We counted 15 smart-glasses financings versus 12 previously. Even Realities gives us a good example of what is changing inside that category. The company raised $150 million after its CEO said it had beaten its initial 10,000-unit sales target and grown from roughly 30–40 employees to around 300–400.

The wider product infrastructure has also moved quickly this year. Qualcomm launched Snapdragon START specifically to make it easier for companies to bring personal-AI devices to market, starting with smart glasses. The program combines hardware modules, software and manufacturing partners rather than leaving every new brand to solve the full technology stack alone.

Snap and Qualcomm also expanded their long-running relationship with a multi-year agreement around future Specs hardware. These developments sit outside our funding totals, but they help explain why investors can currently see a more believable route from prototype to commercial smart-glasses product.

The category still has plenty to prove with consumers. What has changed is that the supporting technology, manufacturing stack and number of funded companies all look more developed than they did a year ago.

Is wearable funding starting to move from health tracking into personal AI?

Yes, although health still anchors the biggest wearable businesses today. Investors are increasingly funding devices that want to become interfaces for AI rather than simply trackers for steps, sleep or heart rate.

Sandbar is one example. The company raised a $23 million Series A for Stream, a voice-enabled ring built around note-taking and AI interaction, after a $13 million Seed only a few months earlier. Its first preorder batch had already sold out by the time of the Series A.

Ultrahuman is moving in a similar direction from a very different starting point. In its latest financing, the company described its ambition as turning the ring into a broader human-computer interface. Qualcomm Ventures participated, and Ultrahuman is working with Qualcomm technology to push more computing onto the ring itself.

The chip industry is preparing for that change too. Qualcomm introduced Snapdragon Wear Elite this year as a platform for on-device personal AI across watches, pins, pendants and other wearable formats.

Health wearables are not disappearing. ŌURA, WHOOP and Ultrahuman are actually pushing further into health data at the same time. The interesting change is that “wearable technology” now covers a wider set of jobs: sensing the body, capturing thoughts, controlling software and acting as an always-available AI interface.

Is Asia-Pacific taking over wearable startup funding?

Asia-Pacific now leads wearable technology funding by deal count, while North America still takes most of the money.

We found 27 Asia-Pacific financings in the current period, up from 14. That is more than half of all deals and almost twice the region’s previous activity.

North America also grew, from 10 to 16 deals, but its real advantage is in dollars. It accounted for 73.2% of disclosed capital, largely because some of the world’s most heavily funded mature wearable companies are based there.

Europe went the other way, falling from 14 financings to six. The European rounds that did happen were not unusually small, so the problem looks more like a shortage of funded companies than collapsing check sizes.

China’s dense smart-glasses pipeline explains a good part of Asia-Pacific’s rise, while India is producing more activity around smart rings and AI-oriented wearable devices. The geographic shift in deals therefore looks broader than the geographic shift in capital.

Are corporate investors moving deeper into wearable technology?

Yes. Corporate investors are showing up more often in wearable rounds today, especially where the product touches healthcare, chips, optics or manufacturing.

Strategic participation increased from 17.9% of deals to 24.5%. The median strategic-backed financing stayed close to $20 million in both periods, so the change comes mainly from corporations appearing in more transactions.

The investor names also show where wearable technology is going. Dexcom invested $75 million in ŌURA and paired the investment with plans to connect glucose data and Oura biometrics. Abbott joined WHOOP’s latest financing as the company expands further into preventive health.

One of the freshest examples is Ultrahuman. Qualcomm Ventures and Labcorp participated in its latest $70 million financing, of which we count $65 million as primary equity and exclude the $5 million debt component. Qualcomm brings wearable computing technology, while Labcorp gives Ultrahuman a direct connection to diagnostics.

Other current rounds in our dataset include companies linked to optics, batteries, audio hardware and manufacturing. Corporate capital is becoming part of how wearable companies connect the device itself to a wider health or technology stack.

Do wearable startups need real traction before investors write big checks now?

For the biggest wearable rounds, yes. Investors are currently writing large checks when a company can point to real product adoption, revenue or repeat use.

Even Realities had already passed its original 10,000-unit sales target before raising $150 million. Its team had expanded roughly tenfold from its early size, and the company was already selling primarily outside China.

Ultrahuman’s latest round offers an even fresher example. Its founder told TechCrunch that the business was running at roughly $140 million in annual revenue and had sold around 800,000 rings. The financing brought in Qualcomm Ventures and Labcorp while the company was preparing to push its ring beyond conventional tracking.

The same pattern appears earlier in the funding curve. Before Sandbar’s $23 million Series A, the first preorder batch for its Stream ring had sold out and early users were reportedly using the device repeatedly throughout the day.

We would not extend that conclusion to every Seed round. Young companies still get funded before they have large revenue numbers. Once the check reaches tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, though, tangible adoption is becoming hard to miss.

Are wearable companies raising to build products or to scale them now?

The largest wearable rounds are increasingly funding global distribution, health services and broader software platforms; getting the first device built is no longer the main story at the top end.

We cannot put a clean percentage on this because companies do not disclose use of funds in a consistent enough way. The recent examples are still revealing.

WHOOP has been adding blood testing, clinician access, AI features and medical-record integrations alongside international expansion. ŌURA acquired gesture-recognition company Doublepoint as it pushes further into wearable AI and new ways of interacting with devices.

Ultrahuman gives us the most recent example. Just after its latest financing, the company launched an integration that can combine medical records with continuous data from its ring. Its funding announcement also described new spending across sensing, AI, miniaturized electronics, clinical research and international expansion.

Those projects are several steps beyond “finish the hardware and launch it.” Today, the better-funded wearable companies are trying to own more of the health, data and computing layer around the device.

What really changed over the last 12 months?

Wearable technology funding became healthier in a fairly broad way. More deals happened, more companies raised money and twice as many businesses entered our dataset through a first financing. As we saw above, the rise in capital survives even after removing the biggest rounds.

At the same time, the top of the market became more extreme. A few mature companies can now raise amounts that would have been unusual for wearable businesses only a few years ago. Looking only at the near-tripling in disclosed capital would therefore overstate how quickly the underlying market improved.

New startups did particularly well. The number of first financings doubled, those companies were younger on average, and their typical starting checks were much larger. Current wearable funding is giving more new companies a real chance to build.

The market also broadened technologically. Smart glasses are attracting more companies, connected hearables improved, and new AI-oriented rings and devices are expanding the meaning of wearable technology beyond traditional fitness tracking.

Corporate investors are more involved too. Healthcare companies, semiconductor groups, diagnostics businesses and hardware specialists are appearing alongside venture investors because wearables increasingly sit at the intersection of consumer hardware, AI and health.

The clearest change is probably one of maturity. Large rounds these days tend to fund companies that already have customers and then want to expand internationally, add clinical or AI capabilities, deepen manufacturing or turn a single device into a broader platform. Early experimentation is still being funded, but the biggest money has moved much closer to commercial scale.