Fitness & Wellness Startups Have Raised $3.6B This Year — but Not Everyone’s a Winner

Wearables and data-driven health brands are pulling big checks. Look closer, though, and one corner of fitness is still showing promise

Fitness and wellness startups have something to celebrate, as long as they’re the right kind of startup.

Startups in the space raised more than $3.6 billion in the first half of the year, according to a new Crunchbase report, a noteworthy rebound from 2025, when wellness-related startup funding hit its lowest sum in at least six years.

But the dollar figure isn’t the real headline, impressive as it is. It’s what investors are now after. A scan of the year’s biggest raises so far shows that data is gold, like the devices tracking consumers around the clock rather than a treadmill that may or may not get used. As Crunchbase notes, connected-hardware names Tonal and Hydrow haven’t landed new investment in more than three years.

Wearable maker Whoop, by contrast, sits atop the year’s funding leaderboard, its $575 million Series G in March the biggest raise of the bunch. The startup, known for its screenless tracker, is now valued at $10.1 billion.

That doesn’t mean hardware is out necessarily, but it does suggest that hardware has to earn its keep and run continuously — such as sleep-tech and smart-mattress company Eight Sleep, which now has a $1.5 billion valuation and wearable maker Ultrahuman, which secured about $44 million in Series C funding in February and is now adding over-the-counter glucose tracking through an Abbott Lingo partnership.

Glucose does appear to be a sweet spot for investors. Signos, maker of an FDA-cleared, over-the-counter wearable that monitors glucose, raised $20 million earlier this year to accelerate growth. Its backers include Google Ventures, Dexcom and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama via 450 Ventures. The company is now turning its focus to building an AI coaching layer that will interpret glucose data in real time, delivering metabolic guidance, gamified tools and “Weight Loss Signal” analytics.

Crunchbase’s report doesn’t spell it out, but endurance events and in-person competition are also drawing checks. Xenom, a startup calling itself the “Decathlon of Fitness,” launched in February with a $15 million seed round led by Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo. Founder Keith Barlow, who noted that seed rounds rarely run that big in fitness, is selling the opposite of a wearable: an analog, real-world stage where people gather.

Meanwhile, L Catterton has been in exclusive talks to take a stake in Hyrox, the global fitness-racing brand, in a deal reported by Bloomberg to value the company at up to roughly $1 billion.

Looking ahead, Crunchbase expects the money to keep flowing toward companies putting AI to work on wellness, with specialized categories like longevity, mental health, sleep and athletic performance drawing the most interest.

The report also anticipates more funding for devices that serve as “data-collection layers” for AI-driven health platforms. What it doesn’t see coming, however, is investors piling back into “large, pricey home-gym gadgets,” at least not without a strong recurring software, data or healthcare component underneath.

Exits are on Crunchbase’s radar too. The report expects more of them through mergers and acquisitions or private equity roll-ups, citing Strava‘s acquisition of running-workout planner Runna and, more recently, Garmin’s purchase of endurance-training platform TrainingPeaks. One major deal already played out this year, when fitness-tech companies Playlist and EGYM combined in a deal valued at roughly $7.5 billion.

Crunchbase doesn’t foresee a flood of IPOs in the sector, aside from a few “star players.”

Whoop is one of them, as CEO Will Ahmed told Bloomberg that the company is on track to go public in roughly 18 months. The company has kicked off a hiring spree and is roughly doubling the size of its Boston headquarters. Smart ring maker Oura is also a likely IPO candidate. The company just named Michael DeLalio as vice president of investor relations.

Though Crunchbase’s data captures a lot of the movement in tech, there’s still interest in the traditional fitness space.

At the ATN summit this past June, Snapdragon Capital Partners principal Julia Sublett called the high-value, low-price (HVLP) space one of the most exciting corners of fitness, but that gyms in that sector need to have a concept that travels well across markets.

Pilates is another area of interest with much white space, according to Kyle Perreira, an executive director at JPMorgan. Some independent operators are feeling the pull. New York Pilates, as ATN has reported, keeps fielding calls it has no interest in taking.

And though he noted that health and wellness has a ton of tailwinds — over 25% of Americans now have a gym membership — he maintains that 2026 will be a year of “reset” in terms of headline-grabbing deals in fitness and wellness.