How's Whoop doing these days?
In our wearable technology market deck, you will find everything you need to understand the market
SUMMARY
WHOOP is doing well these days, and the evidence is now strong enough to say that clearly: the company is still growing fast, users remain unusually engaged, and the product is moving from performance tracking into broader health intelligence.
The main shift is that WHOOP no longer looks like just a premium wearable subscription. With 2.5M+ members, a $1.1B bookings run-rate, 103% year-over-year bookings growth, and positive operating cash flow, the company has moved into a more mature scale-up phase.
The Oura comparison is useful because it shows WHOOP’s shape more clearly. Oura has broader consumer reach with around 5M subscribers, while WHOOP appears to extract more value per serious user.
Engagement is one of WHOOP’s strongest signals. Members reportedly open the app more than 8 times per day, which suggests the product is closer to a daily coaching loop than a passive tracker.
WHOOP’s health expansion is real now. Advanced Labs, lab uploads, women’s biomarker panels, CMS ACCESS selection, HSA/FSA eligibility, and clinician-reviewed guidance all point to a company trying to become health infrastructure, not just a recovery-score app.
That same health move creates WHOOP’s biggest risk. The FDA warning around Blood Pressure Insights shows that the company’s medical-adjacent ambition is moving faster than the regulatory comfort zone.
The subscriber-trust issue matters more than the hardware complaints themselves. The WHOOP 5.0 and MG backlash showed that the subscription model only works if users believe the upgrade bargain is fair.
The subscription model still works financially, but it is easier to attack now. Samsung offers a no-subscription ring, Garmin is growing strongly in fitness, and Oura’s lower monthly fee makes WHOOP’s paid layer feel more expensive unless the coaching value keeps improving.
WHOOP’s elite-performance position remains strong. Ferrari, Al Nassr, PSG, Ronaldo, and the U.S. Navy contract all show that the brand still travels well in high-performance environments.
The company is also trying to become more culturally wearable. Samuel Ross, Project Terrain, Johan Liden, Ferrari, PSG, and future apparel direction suggest WHOOP knows the band has to feel like an object people want to wear, not just a sensor strapped to the body.
WHOOP’s AI story is more credible than most wearable AI stories because it combines daily data with daily attention. The bigger question is whether it can turn that into behavior change, not just better summaries.
Our read is simple: WHOOP has already proven demand. The next phase is harder because it must prove that a subscription wearable can become a trusted health platform without alienating users who simply wanted a great performance tracker.
This market map, featured in our wearable technology market deck, highlights top companies and startups in the wearable technology market
Is WHOOP still growing fast now?
WHOOP is still growing fast today, and the latest numbers are super strong, so we shouldn’t treat it as just premium-wearable hype.
In its March 2026 Series G announcement, WHOOP said it had passed 2.5M members, ended 2025 at a $1.1B bookings run-rate, grew bookings 103% year over year, and became operating-cash-flow positive. That mix matters. If WHOOP were only selling expensive bands to fitness obsessives, we would expect a nice revenue story, but not necessarily that combination of scale, usage, and cash discipline.
The more useful comparison is with Oura. Oura is bigger in paid users, with around 5M subscribers and roughly $1B revenue in 2025, but WHOOP’s disclosed bookings run-rate is already in the same zone with about half the member base. That points to a different profile: Oura has broader consumer reach, while WHOOP is extracting more value per serious user.
A small but telling investor signal came from Collaborative Fund, which led the round and called WHOOP its largest investment ever.
The line that stood out was not the valuation, but Craig Shapiro’s point that WHOOP’s awareness-to-purchase ratio is “best in its class.” That is not a public audited metric, but it is useful because it tells us what the lead investor thinks is special: not just awareness, but conversion.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest wearable technology market report.
Are WHOOP users still really engaged these days?
WHOOP still looks unusually sticky for a wearable, and that is one of the strongest current signals.
The company says members open the app more than 8 times per day. For a health app, that is a big number because most wearables become passive after the novelty fades. WHOOP is closer to a daily coaching loop: sleep, recovery, strain, stress, journal, labs, and now AI explanations. The user is not just checking a step count.
There is also the data depth. WHOOP says it has collected 24B hours of proprietary physiological data. Alone, that number can sound like fundraising decoration. But paired with daily app engagement, it becomes more meaningful: WHOOP has both the raw signal and the habit loop needed to turn that signal into coaching.
The third signal is the product direction. The current AI product roles describe WHOOP as an “intelligent, personalized health companion” and talk about systems that reason over member data. That is a very specific hiring brief. It suggests WHOOP is trying to make the app feel less like a dashboard and more like a daily interpreter.
As this chart shows, and as featured in our wearable technology market deck, search interest in smart rings has been increasing rapidly
Is WHOOP becoming a real health company now?
WHOOP is genuinely moving into health now, and this is no longer just a branding shift.
The cleanest signal was Advanced Labs. WHOOP opened the service in September 2025 after saying more than 350,000 people had joined the waitlist since May. That is a strong demand signal because bloodwork is a higher-friction product than a wearable upgrade. People had to want more than recovery scores.
Then WHOOP moved quickly. In November 2025, it launched Advanced Labs Uploads so members could upload outside lab results. In March 2026, it added a women’s health biomarker panel with 11 female-specific markers. In April 2026, WHOOP Physician Services was selected for CMS’s ACCESS model, which starts in July 2026 and focuses on Medicare beneficiaries with chronic conditions.
This sequence is important. WHOOP is not just adding one medical-looking feature to justify a premium tier. The team is actually building around labs, clinician review, Medicare access, women’s health, HSA/FSA eligibility, and continuous data.
That starts to look like health infrastructure, even if the company still has to earn medical trust.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest wearable technology market report.
Is the FDA problem still a big deal for WHOOP now?
The FDA issue is still one of the biggest live risks around WHOOP.
In July 2025, the FDA warned WHOOP that Blood Pressure Insights looked like a medical-device feature that needed clearance or approval. WHOOP pushed back and argued the feature was a wellness tool. As of May 2026, STAT reported that the dispute had still not been resolved, according to a senior WHOOP health executive.
That matters because WHOOP’s new strategy is drifting closer to clinical language. The more the company talks about blood pressure, biomarkers, chronic conditions, and “medical grade” hardware, the less room it has for casual consumer-wellness ambiguity. The product ambition is moving faster than the regulatory comfort zone.
The legal spillover has already started. A November 2025 class action alleged WHOOP’s blood-pressure product was falsely advertised as medical-grade, and legal analysts later pointed out that the FDA letter became part of the litigation story. WHOOP’s September 2025 hire of Jason Lynch as Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Legal Officer also looks more interesting in that context.
This is a company scaling, but also arming itself for messier legal terrain.
This chart, included in our wearable technology market deck, illustrates yearly VC funding for wearable technology startups
Did WHOOP annoy its own subscribers lately?
WHOOP did annoy its own subscribers recently, and the damage was more about trust than product specs.
The May 2025 WHOOP 5.0 and MG launch created a backlash because long-time members believed future hardware upgrades were supposed to be free after six months of membership.
WHOOP first asked many existing users to pay or extend membership, then revised the policy after complaints. That reversal matters because the subscription model only works if users feel the deal is fair.
The MG launch added another layer. TechRadar and The Verge reported user complaints about new WHOOP MG units becoming unresponsive soon after setup, with WHOOP replacing affected devices. The company said the problem was limited, but the timing was bad: the premium device, tied to the highest-priced plan, was the one generating reliability noise.
The latest weak signal is more philosophical. In June 2026, open-source projects like Noop, Goose, and OpenWhoop started getting attention because they try to read WHOOP data without an active subscription or cloud dependency.
These are not mainstream products, but they reveal a user emotion that matters: some people like the hardware and data, but dislike having access locked behind a recurring fee.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest wearable technology market report.
Is WHOOP’s subscription model still working now?
WHOOP’s subscription model is still working financially, but it is becoming easier to attack.
Financially, the model looks strong. WHOOP’s March 2026 disclosure showed 103% bookings growth, positive operating cash flow, and annual plans that now run from the lower-cost One tier to the higher-priced Life tier. That gives WHOOP a wide monetization ladder, and it explains why investors are willing to underwrite the company at a $10.1B valuation.
The pressure comes from alternatives. Samsung’s Galaxy Ring has no required subscription. Garmin’s fitness segment grew 42% in Q1 2026, showing that serious health and sports wearables are still selling very well without WHOOP’s exact model. Oura still has a subscription, but at about $6 per month, it feels cheaper and more mass-consumer than WHOOP’s annual membership.
So WHOOP’s model is not broken, but it is more exposed now. The company has to keep making the paid layer feel like intelligence, coaching, and health interpretation.
If the user starts seeing it as a paywall around their own biometric data, the backlash gets much easier for competitors to exploit.
This chart, included in our wearable technology market deck, shows why Whoop is leading in wearable technology
Is Oura becoming a bigger problem for WHOOP now?
Oura is probably WHOOP’s most serious direct comparison today, even though the products feel different.
Oura has become the cleanest consumer-health benchmark. Recent reporting around its 2026 IPO direction says it has sold about 5.5M rings, has around 5M paying subscribers, and reached roughly $1B revenue in 2025.
That makes it larger than WHOOP by member count and probably easier for casual wellness users to adopt because a ring feels less like athlete gear.
WHOOP is stronger where the user wants coaching around training, strain, recovery, and performance. Oura is stronger where the user wants passive sleep, stress, readiness, women’s health, and a more discreet form factor. The gap is less about sensor quality and more about who the product feels made for.
The interesting thing is that both companies are now talking like healthcare platforms. Oura is adding AI health services, Health Panels, GLP-1-related tracking, and IPO visibility. WHOOP is adding Advanced Labs, CMS access, blood pressure, and clinician-reviewed guidance. The market is no longer “band versus ring.” It is a race to own the daily health interface.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest wearable technology market report.
Are new competitors coming for WHOOP’s screenless band?
Yes, WHOOP’s screenless band idea is now attractive enough that competitors and copycats are circling it.
The strongest proof is legal. In February 2026, a federal court granted WHOOP a preliminary injunction against Lexqi, stopping U.S. sales of a wearable WHOOP said copied its trade dress.
That is a positive signal because courts do not usually protect generic-looking hardware lightly. It suggests WHOOP’s screenless fabric-band design has become recognizable.
But the same signal also shows the risk. If cheaper bands can look close enough to cause confusion, WHOOP has to defend both design and price. The open-source workaround noise in June 2026 adds another angle: the subscription model itself is becoming a target for technically minded users.
Garmin is the more serious watchlist item. Recent reporting said Garmin may be preparing a screenless fitness band called Cirqa, with leaked pricing around $450 to $509. Garmin has not confirmed the product, so we should treat it carefully.
Still, Garmin’s Q1 2026 fitness growth makes the rumor more credible as a strategic direction: if Garmin enters WHOOP’s exact form factor, WHOOP suddenly faces a trusted sports brand with a huge installed base.
This chart, included in our wearable technology market deck, illustrates yearly funding for wearable technology startups
Is WHOOP still winning with elite athletes these days?
WHOOP is still very strong with elite athletes, and lately it has turned that credibility into institutional partnerships.
The recent partnership cluster is unusually dense. In January 2026, WHOOP became Scuderia Ferrari HP’s official health and fitness wearable partner. In February 2026, it became Al Nassr’s exclusive fitness, performance, and health wearable technology partner through the 2026 Saudi Pro League season. In April 2026, PSG signed a multi-year deal through 2029 covering both men’s and women’s teams.
Those are not random ambassador deals. Ferrari talks about using WHOOP across the team, not just putting a logo on a car. PSG says players and staff will use WHOOP for heart rate, HRV, sleep, strain, and stress insights. Al Nassr gives WHOOP a direct link to Cristiano Ronaldo’s club environment, which matters because Ronaldo is also an investor and ambassador.
The more non-obvious signal is the U.S. Navy contract through MIT Lincoln Laboratory in April 2026. That moves WHOOP from elite sports into fatigue, readiness, and watchstanding. For investors, that is interesting because it shows the performance use case travels beyond athletes into high-stakes workforces.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest wearable technology market report.
Is WHOOP hiring like it is scaling now?
WHOOP is hiring like a company trying to step up a level, not like one quietly defending its base.
In March 2026, WHOOP announced plans to add more than 600 roles across software, research and design, hardware, product, marketing, AI, clinical innovation, and international growth. The Boston Globe reported that most new roles would be based at the Kenmore Square headquarters, and some reports put the existing employee base around 800. If that base number is directionally right, the 600-role plan is huge.
The hiring categories are more useful than the headline number. WHOOP is not only adding salespeople after a fundraise. They are actually hiring around AI-first product design, clinical innovation, advanced research, hardware, and international growth. That matches the product shift we see elsewhere: labs, health, coaching, medical-adjacent features, and global expansion.
Will Ahmed’s March 2026 line was also telling: while many companies debate whether to hire people or invest in AI, WHOOP said it is doing both.
That sounds promotional, of course, but the job mix backs it up. The company is trying to scale headcount and software leverage at the same time.
This chart, included in our wearable technology market deck, compares the main business model options for wearable technology brands
Is WHOOP becoming more of a lifestyle brand now?
WHOOP is clearly trying to become more wearable in the cultural sense, not just the biometric sense.
The clearest sign was the January 2026 Samuel Ross partnership. Ross joined as Global Creative Director for WHOOP x SR_A, with a multi-year collaboration called Project Terrain. It is an actual fashion and industrial-design move, and it says WHOOP knows the band has to live on the body all day without feeling like medical equipment.
The September 2025 appointment of Johan Liden as Chief Creative Officer points in the same direction. WHOOP already had athlete credibility; what it needs now is broader taste credibility. Ferrari, PSG, Ronaldo, Samuel Ross, and future apparel or accessory drops all push the brand away from “tracker for intense athletes” and closer to “performance object people want to be seen wearing.”
That matters more than it sounds. Oura wins partly because a ring is socially easy. Apple wins because the watch is culturally normal. WHOOP’s screenless band is distinctive, but distinctive can become weird if the brand does not keep shaping the aesthetic. The recent creative moves show WHOOP understands that risk.
Is WHOOP’s AI story real now?
WHOOP’s AI story is more credible than most wearable AI stories, because the company has both daily data and daily user attention.
The raw base is large: WHOOP says it has 24B hours of proprietary physiological data. The habit signal is also strong, with members opening the app more than 8 times daily. As seen above, that pairing is important because AI coaching needs repeated feedback loops. A model that speaks once a week is much less useful than one tied to sleep, recovery, training, labs, and behavior every day.
The job postings make the direction more concrete. A recent Senior Product Manager, AI role described the work as building the AI experience layer and the intelligence systems that understand members, reason over their data, and deliver accurate, empathetic, actionable insights. A May 2026 Senior Product Designer role also focused on AI-first product experiences and trustworthy interfaces.
The real question is whether WHOOP can turn AI into behavior change, not just nicer summaries. Advanced Labs helps here because blood biomarkers give the AI more context than wearable signals alone. If WHOOP connects labs, daily habits, training, recovery, and clinical guidance well, the AI layer becomes a reason to keep paying.
This chart, featured in our wearable technology market deck, illustrates how revenue is divided among customer segments in the wearable technology market
Is WHOOP getting ready for an IPO now?
WHOOP looks like it is being prepared for an IPO window, even if the company has not formally filed.
The March 2026 round gave WHOOP a $10.1B valuation, a larger balance sheet, strategic investors, global expansion capital, and cleaner growth metrics to show future public investors. The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal both reported that WHOOP is considering going public within roughly two years. That does not mean an IPO is certain, but it shows the company is now being discussed in that frame.
The timing also fits the category. Oura has reportedly filed confidentially for a U.S. IPO in 2026, Strava has also been discussed as part of the consumer-health IPO cluster, and public markets are starting to see more mature digital-health businesses with real revenue rather than early wellness stories.
The main IPO problem is not demand. It is narrative control. WHOOP can tell a strong story around growth, engagement, cash flow, labs, AI, and global expansion. Public-market investors will also ask harder questions about FDA risk, churn after the upgrade backlash, gross margins, hardware replacement costs, and whether Oura or Garmin can compress pricing.
So, how is WHOOP doing these days?
WHOOP is doing well right now, and the evidence is strong enough to say that without hedging. The company has real growth, real engagement, fresh capital, high-end institutional partnerships, and a product roadmap that is moving from recovery tracking into broader health intelligence.
The temperature is hot, but not clean. WHOOP’s best signals today are also the source of its biggest risks. Advanced Labs, Blood Pressure Insights, CMS access, and AI coaching make the company more valuable if they work. They also make it more exposed to FDA pressure, consumer litigation, trust issues, and public-market scrutiny.
Our read is that WHOOP has already proven demand. The next phase is harder: proving that a subscription wearable can become a trusted health platform without losing users who simply wanted a great performance tracker.
| Question | Our answer | Signals behind it |
|---|---|---|
| Is WHOOP still growing fast now? | Yes, WHOOP is still growing fast today. | March 2026 Series G; 2.5M+ members; $1.1B bookings run-rate; 103% YoY bookings growth; cash-flow positive; Collaborative Fund’s conversion comment. |
| Are WHOOP users still engaged? | Yes, the app still looks unusually sticky. | 8+ app opens per day; 24B hours of physiological data; AI product roles focused on reasoning over member data. |
| Is WHOOP becoming a health company? | Yes, the move is real now. | Advanced Labs; 350,000-person waitlist; Quest; lab uploads; women’s panel; CMS ACCESS; HSA/FSA eligibility. |
| Is FDA risk still serious? | Yes, it is probably the biggest live risk. | July 2025 FDA warning; unresolved May 2026 STAT report; class action; legal leadership hire. |
| Did WHOOP annoy subscribers lately? | Yes, and trust is the real issue. | May 2025 upgrade backlash; policy reversal; MG failures; replacements; open-source no-subscription apps. |
| Is the subscription model still working? | Yes financially, but it is easier to attack. | Strong bookings; premium annual tiers; Samsung no-subscription model; Garmin fitness growth; Oura’s lower monthly fee. |
| Is Oura a bigger problem now? | Yes, Oura is the cleanest comparison. | Oura around 5M subscribers; $1B 2025 revenue; Ring 5 launch; IPO direction; healthcare-platform expansion. |
| Are new bands coming for WHOOP? | Yes, WHOOP’s form factor is being copied and tested. | Lexqi injunction; open-source app attention; Garmin Cirqa rumor; Luna Band no-subscription positioning. |
| Is WHOOP still winning elite athletes? | Yes, and it is moving into institutions too. | Ferrari; Al Nassr; PSG through 2029; Ronaldo investor/ambassador; U.S. Navy/MIT Lincoln Laboratory contract. |
| Is WHOOP hiring like it is scaling? | Yes, the hiring pattern is expansionary. | 600+ roles; AI, clinical, hardware, product, international growth; AI-first product/design jobs; Boston HQ expansion. |
| Is WHOOP becoming a lifestyle brand? | Yes, it is trying to make the band culturally wearable. | Samuel Ross; Project Terrain; Johan Liden; Ferrari/PSG visibility; performance apparel direction. |
| Is WHOOP’s AI story real now? | Yes, more real than most wearable AI claims. | 24B data hours; daily app use; AI product roles; Advanced Labs context; founder emphasis on AI plus hiring. |
| Is WHOOP preparing for IPO? | It looks IPO-track, though not filed. | $10.1B valuation; FT/WSJ IPO reporting; Oura IPO momentum; public-market-ready metrics; unresolved risk questions. |
OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests how WHOOP is doing today by looking at the company across the dimensions that matter most: growth, engagement, health expansion, regulatory pressure, subscriber trust, competition, partnerships, hiring, brand direction, AI, and IPO readiness.
WHOOP is difficult to read from the outside because the main question is not simply whether it is growing, but what kind of company it is becoming. Instead of relying on intuition, broad opinions, or vibe-based reasoning, we broke the analysis into specific evidence buckets and compared the signals inside each one.
For each dimension, we prioritized recent, checkable signals that helped separate durable progress from temporary noise. We gave more weight to company disclosures, product launches, regulatory events, customer reactions, partnership announcements, job postings, credible reporting, and public legal or agency documents.
That structured aggregation is what makes the final answer clearer. WHOOP looks genuinely strong right now, but the same areas that make the company more ambitious also make it more exposed to regulatory, trust, competitive, and public-market scrutiny.
When we discuss WHOOP’s growth, we rely mainly on disclosed company metrics such as members, bookings run-rate, year-over-year bookings growth, operating-cash-flow status, funding, valuation, and investor commentary. These are treated as directional business signals, not as audited public-company financials.
When we discuss engagement, we focus on the combination of daily app usage, proprietary physiological data depth, and AI product direction. A large data archive matters more when users are still returning daily, because health coaching needs repeated feedback loops rather than occasional dashboard checks.
When we discuss the health-company shift, we look at Advanced Labs, lab uploads, women’s health biomarker panels, CMS ACCESS selection, HSA/FSA eligibility, clinician review, and continuous wearable data. These signals matter because they show WHOOP moving beyond recovery tracking into higher-friction health infrastructure.
When we discuss risk, we focus on the FDA warning letter, the unresolved regulatory dispute reported in 2026, subscriber backlash after the WHOOP 5.0 and MG launch, device-reliability complaints, legal action, and open-source workarounds. These are important because they show where WHOOP’s model can lose trust even while the business is growing.
When we discuss competition, we compare WHOOP with Oura, Samsung, Garmin, and possible screenless-band alternatives. The goal is not to say these products are identical, but to understand where WHOOP’s subscription model, form factor, health positioning, and athlete-performance identity are most exposed.
When we discuss brand, partnerships, hiring, AI, and IPO readiness, we use partnership announcements, institutional contracts, leadership and creative appointments, job postings, funding context, valuation, and credible IPO reporting. These signals help show whether WHOOP is merely defending a niche or preparing for a larger platform phase.
We are not affiliated with WHOOP or any other company mentioned in this analysis. We do not own shares in WHOOP, and we have no financial relationship with the company. This article is for informational and analytical purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell any security, or a prediction of future market performance.
Key sources used for this analysis include: WHOOP’s Series G funding announcement, Mubadala on WHOOP’s $10B valuation round, WHOOP on Advanced Labs, Quest Diagnostics on Advanced Labs, WHOOP support on Advanced Labs Uploads, WHOOP on the women’s health biomarker panel, WHOOP on CMS ACCESS selection, the FDA warning letter to WHOOP, ClassAction.org on the blood-pressure lawsuit, The Verge on the WHOOP 5.0 upgrade backlash, The Verge on WHOOP’s upgrade-policy reversal, The Verge on WHOOP MG replacements, the Goose open-source project, WHOOP on the Lexqi injunction, Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly on the Lexqi case, Garmin’s Q1 2026 earnings release, Samsung on Galaxy Ring, The Guardian on Oura’s 2026 direction, WHOOP on the Scuderia Ferrari HP partnership, Ferrari on WHOOP as team partner, WHOOP on the PSG partnership, PSG on the WHOOP partnership, and WHOOP on the MIT Lincoln Laboratory and U.S. Navy contract.
This chart, included in our wearable technology market deck, shows how health monitoring wearable technology has evolved over time
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