Silicon Valley Throws $100M at AI-Powered Mattress With a Subscription – Decrypt

Eight Sleep, a startup that sells $3,000 AI-powered mattresses with a month-to-month subscription price, simply raised $100 million in Sequence D funding, hoping to bolster a comparatively novel thought throughout the shopper discretionary sector.

The spherical—led by Founders Fund, Y Combinator, Valor Fairness Companions, and HSG (previously Sequoia China)—additionally drew investments from F1 driver Charles Leclerc and McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown.

The deal pushes the corporate’s valuation to about $500 million, with greater than $500 million in Pod gross sales reported since launch.

Eight Sleep’s “Pod” system makes use of water-filled tubes in a mattress cowl to regulate mattress temperature between 55°F and 110°F (13-43 °C).

Constructed-in sensors monitor coronary heart charge, respiratory, and coronary heart charge variability, which an AI system referred to as Autopilot makes use of to tweak the surroundings in actual time.

Costs begin at $2,500 for the mattress topper, and climb over $4,000 for the entire system. Then there’s a $17–$25 month-to-month subscription for “superior options”—as a result of sure, even your mattress now wants a membership plan.

The corporate has amassed a high-profile fan base, together with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Scarlett Johansson swears by it, and biohacker Bryan Johnson, who spends $2M a yr on anti-aging, is one other person.

“This new funding permits us to speed up the deployment of AI for sleep optimization, increase into medical purposes like menopausal sleep and sleep apnea, and produce our expertise to hundreds of thousands of individuals around the globe,” CEO Matteo Franceschetti stated within the announcement. The previous lawyer, turned sleep obsessive, based the corporate in 2014 after struggling along with his personal sleep points.

However not all of the suggestions has been optimistic. On social media, customers have shared tales about glitches that trigger the system to cease working completely, leaving them with an costly, non-functional mattress. Others have reported points with water leaks and connectivity issues.

The system’s AI has been referred to as a “black field” by some customers, who complain it doesn’t present clear knowledge.

Eight Sleep’s new funding will assist the event of what it calls a “Sleep Agent,” an AI that can run 1000’s of nightly simulations to additional refine a person’s relaxation. The corporate can also be searching for FDA approval for medical purposes of its expertise, together with treating menopausal sizzling flashes and sleep apnea..

The corporate says its AI fashions have processed over 1 billion hours of sleep knowledge. With $100 million in contemporary capital, the guess for Eight Sleep stays that its mix of {hardware} and software program will proceed to discover a respectable resting place, regardless of the worth.