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By · Published November 3, 2026 · 23 min read

Whoop Valuation and Revenue: How Whoop Grew to $10.1B

Whoop hit a $10.1B valuation in March 2026 on a $1.1B bookings run rate. See every round from the 2013 seed to Series G, the FDA fight and 9 growth moves.

Part of our Startup Growth Case Studies guide.

Whoop sells a screenless fitness band that you can't buy on its own. You pay for a membership, and the band comes with it.

As of October 2026, Whoop's latest valuation is $10.1 billion. That price was set by a $575 million Series G led by Collaborative Fund in March 2026, nearly triple the $3.6 billion valuation from 2021. Whoop has not announced a newer round, and founder Will Ahmed told Yahoo Finance he expects it to be the company's last private financing.

Whoop is private and does not publish revenue. It does publish bookings. The company said its bookings grew 103% in 2025 and it exited the year at a $1.1 billion bookings run rate, with positive operating cash flow. Ahmed separately told TechCrunch that revenue grew more than 100% in 2025.

Whoop says it has raised more than $900 million in venture capital. Adding up its announced rounds gives about $980 million, including debt in its 2019 round. It had more than 2.5 million members as of March 2026, and CNBC reported more than 2.7 million users in June 2026.

The one-line reason it grew: Whoop got elite athletes to wear its band because it was useful to them, then in 2018 turned the band into a monthly membership that ordinary people could afford to try. Almost everything since then has given those members another reason to keep paying.

Whoop's growth in one table

DateMilestone
2012Will Ahmed, John Capodilupo and Aurelian Nicolae start Whoop at the Harvard Innovation Labs
July 2013$3M seed round led by Collaborative Fund, after Ahmed estimates 143 investor rejections
June 2014Raises $6M, according to an SEC filing
September 2015First product launches for elite athletes and teams; $12M Series B led by Two Sigma Ventures
2017Approved for in-game use by Major League Baseball; Ahmed says Whoop came within a week of bankruptcy
March 2018$25M Series C led by UAE71 Capital
May 2018Switches to a $30-a-month membership with the band included
November 2019$55M Series D, equity and debt, led by Foundry Group
June 2020PGA Tour buys 1,000 straps after Nick Watney's Whoop flags a COVID infection
October 2020$100M Series E at a $1.2B valuation, led by IVP
August 2021$200M Series F at a $3.6B valuation, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2
July 2022Lays off 15% of corporate staff
September 2023Launches Whoop Coach, built on OpenAI's GPT-4; starts selling at Amazon, Best Buy and Dick's
May 2024Cristiano Ronaldo becomes an investor and global ambassador; Whoop expands into the Gulf
May 2025Launches Whoop 5.0 and Whoop MG with three membership tiers
July 2025FDA sends a warning letter over Blood Pressure Insights
September 2025Launches Advanced Labs blood testing with Quest Diagnostics to a 350,000-person waitlist
March 2026$575M Series G at a $10.1B valuation; 2.5M+ members; $1.1B bookings run rate
June 2026FDA closes the warning letter after Whoop modifies the feature
August 2026Ahmed tells Bloomberg an IPO is about 18 months away
October 2026Launches in Arabic; says Gulf membership is up more than 75% year over year

1. Whoop started with the hardest customers in sports

Will Ahmed captained the Harvard squash team and trained so hard that he kept running himself down. "I would go through periods of getting fitter and fitter, and then somewhat suddenly feeling completely run down ... and not knowing why," he told CNBC.

He read hundreds of medical papers on overtraining while studying government and economics. Before graduating in 2012, he started building Whoop with fellow students John Capodilupo and Aurelian Nicolae at the Harvard Innovation Labs.

Raising money was slow. Ahmed estimates he collected 143 rejections in the early years, and some investors told him to write software for other companies' wearables instead. He refused, arguing Whoop had to build "the whole end-to-end system," hardware included. A $3 million seed round led by Collaborative Fund finally came in July 2013, followed by a $6 million round in June 2014 that MobiHealthNews found in an SEC filing.

Collaborative Fund founder Craig Shapiro later wrote that Nicholas Negroponte introduced him to Ahmed in April 2013. Thirteen years later, the same firm led the $10.1 billion round.

The first product did not target consumers. When Whoop launched in September 2015, it sold exclusively to elite athletes and teams and announced a $12 million Series B led by Two Sigma Ventures. "I thought it would make sense for athletes to invest in the other 22 hours that they were not training," Ahmed told ESPN at launch.

Ahmed reached stars through their trainers and performance coaches. By September 2015, LeBron James and Michael Phelps were users, according to CNBC. That December, Infosys added a $3 million strategic investment.

Leagues followed. In its Series C announcement, Whoop said that in 2017 it was approved for in-game use by Major League Baseball and became the Official Recovery Wearable of the NFL Players Association.

That $25 million Series C, led by UAE71 Capital in March 2018, also brought in the NFLPA and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, TechCrunch reported. The athlete strategy gave Whoop credibility. It did not yet give it a business.

2. Whoop stopped selling the band and sold a membership

Famous users did not translate into reliable sales. By 2017, Ahmed told CNBC, Whoop was at one point "a week away from declaring bankruptcy."

The problem was price. Professional athletes might pay $500 for a fitness band, Ahmed said, but a wider audience wouldn't, and Whoop needed volume to fund its research.

In May 2018, Whoop changed the model. It launched a consumer membership at $30 a month with a six-month minimum, so new members paid $180 to start. The company called it the lowest entry point it had ever offered.

The band was no longer sold on its own. The only way to get one was to subscribe, WIRED reported. "It expands the market," Ahmed told WIRED. "What we expect is that after people try it for a period of time, they're going to see powerful behavior change."

The switch lowered the price of trying Whoop, turned one-time hardware sales into recurring revenue, and made each new band a retention tool rather than a new purchase.

It worked quickly. When Whoop raised a $55 million Series D in November 2019, led by Foundry Group, it cited "monumental growth" in membership and said the money would go mainly to consumer acquisition. For context, TechCrunch noted that PitchBook had valued the 2018 round at $125 million post-money.

Today, every Whoop plan is an annual membership priced between $199 and $359.

3. Whoop left off the screen

Whoop's band has no display, no notifications and no apps. That looks like a missing feature. Ahmed treats it as the strategy.

"If you have a screen, then you're a watch," he told TechCrunch in March 2026. "And if you're a watch, then you're competing with a lot of other watches, because people will never wear two watches."

Without a screen, Whoop doesn't have to beat the Apple Watch. It can sit on the other wrist, or off the wrist entirely. In September 2021, Whoop launched Whoop 4.0 with Whoop Body, a line of sports bras, compression tops, leggings and boxers with pods that hold the sensor against the torso, waist or calf. The 4.0 was 33% smaller than the previous model, and the apparel cost $54 to $109.

Apparel became a real line of business. Ahmed told TechCrunch that the clothing line grew 70% in 2025.

The lack of a screen also changed how people use the product. Instead of glancing at a wrist, members open the app to see their sleep, recovery and strain scores. Whoop says members open the app more than eight times a day, almost three times the rate of other screenless wearables. Ahmed told TechCrunch that 83% of monthly active users open the app on any given day, a ratio he says trails only WhatsApp.

Both numbers come from the company. But a band people check every morning is less likely to end up in a drawer, which is what a subscription business needs.

4. COVID turned a recovery metric into a health alert

Whoop's breakthrough moment with the public came from a metric most people had never thought about: respiratory rate during sleep.

In June 2020, PGA Tour golfer Nick Watney saw his respiratory rate spike overnight during the RBC Heritage. He had no other symptoms, asked for a test anyway, and tested positive. "This alerted me to ask the PGA Tour for a test even though I didn't have any other symptoms," Watney said in a statement quoted by CNBC.

Within a week, the PGA Tour contacted Ahmed and procured 1,000 straps for players, caddies and essential staff.

Whoop also said an algorithm built with CQUniversity researchers detected 20% of COVID-19 cases in the two days before symptoms, Golf Digest reported, a claim then awaiting peer review.

The story reached far beyond golf. Whoop's subscriber base grew more sharply during the pandemic, the company told CNBC in October 2020. That month, it raised a $100 million Series E at a $1.2 billion valuation, led by IVP. It had more than 330 employees, including over 200 hired in 2020.

Ten months later came a $200 million Series F at a $3.6 billion valuation, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The Boston Globe noted that the round tripled Whoop's valuation from October 2020.

5. Whoop made athletes owners, not paid billboards

Most sports brands pay athletes to wear their products. Whoop has a long-standing policy against giving athletes equity in exchange for wearing the band, TechCrunch reported. Ahmed's reasoning is that if they like the product, they will wear it anyway.

Instead, athletes who already used Whoop could invest alongside venture firms. The Series E included Kevin Durant (through Thirty Five Ventures), Larry Fitzgerald, Patrick Mahomes, Eli Manning, Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas.

The biggest name came in May 2024. Whoop announced Cristiano Ronaldo as an investor and global ambassador, calling it one of his most significant investments. Ahmed said Ronaldo had been a member "for a number of years," and told The National that Ronaldo reached out to Whoop about a partnership.

The deal was announced alongside Whoop's expansion into Saudi Arabia, where Ronaldo plays for Al Nassr, and three other Gulf states.

By the Series G, athlete investors included Ronaldo, LeBron James, McIlroy, Reggie Miller, Virgil van Dijk and Shane Lowry. Formal partnerships with Ferrari, the PGA Tour and UCI mountain biking work differently, Ahmed told TechCrunch: they put the brand in front of larger audiences.

The approach produces free publicity. At the Australian Open in early 2026, officials told players including Carlos Alcaraz to remove their Whoop bands mid-tournament. The resulting coverage, Ahmed told TechCrunch, "spotlighted the fact that all these very talented people are just organically wearing Whoop."

6. Whoop came out of a hard reset with an AI coach

The SoftBank round was followed by a difficult stretch. In July 2022, Whoop laid off 15% of its corporate staff, cutting to about 550 employees and saying it needed to "grow responsibly and control our own destiny." In January 2023, it cut another 4% of corporate staff, all from its new B2B unit, Whoop Unite, as Business Insider reported.

Whoop then moved early on generative AI. In September 2023, it launched Whoop Coach, built on OpenAI's GPT-4. It answers questions about a member's own data in more than 50 languages. Whoop called it the first wearable to offer individualized performance coaching on demand.

The coach turned a dashboard into a conversation. According to an OpenAI case study, 40% of questions members asked were requests for recommendations, and the most popular was "How can I improve my sleep quality?"

The same announcement widened distribution: Whoop was now sold on Amazon and at Best Buy and Dick's Sporting Goods, with a one-month free trial. Today the company says its AI models draw on more than 24 billion hours of physiological data.

7. Whoop 5.0 and MG split one membership into three

For most of its history, Whoop had one product and one price. That changed on May 8, 2025, when it launched Whoop 5.0 and Whoop MG, both with battery life of more than 14 days.

The launch came with three annual tiers:

  • Whoop One, $199: Whoop 5.0 with sleep, strain and recovery tracking.
  • Whoop Peak, $239: adds Healthspan, which estimates biological age, plus a Health Monitor and real-time Stress Monitor.
  • Whoop Life, $359: the MG device, with an ECG heart screener, on-demand AFib detection and Blood Pressure Insights.

Tiers let Whoop charge more to members who want more. Healthspan became the company's most popular feature after its May 2025 launch, Ahmed told TechCrunch.

The launch also showed the risk of the membership model. Whoop had previously promised free hardware upgrades to members of at least six months, but removed that promise and asked some existing members to pay $49 or $79 to upgrade. The r/Whoop subreddit filled with angry members, The Verge reported. Within days, Whoop revised the policy so members with 12 or more months left on their commitment got the new device free.

Whoop kept adding paid layers. In September 2025, it launched Advanced Labs, clinician-reviewed blood testing through Quest Diagnostics priced at $199 for one test, $349 for two and $599 for four a year. More than 350,000 members had joined the waitlist after a preview in May.

The year ended with bookings up 103% and new memberships doubling, according to CNBC. Whoop has not said how much of that growth came from the new tiers.

8. Whoop refused to switch off blood pressure

Whoop's push into health brought it into conflict with regulators.

On July 14, 2025, the FDA sent Whoop a warning letter saying Blood Pressure Insights was a medical device being marketed without clearance or approval. The letter noted that Whoop had met with the agency twice that May and argued in writing that the feature was a wellness tool, not a device.

Whoop did not back down. It said the FDA was "overstepping its authority" and kept building, TechCrunch reported. Ahmed argued on CNBC that the 21st Century Cures Act covered wellness features like this one, MobiHealthNews reported.

Then the rules changed. On January 6, 2026, the FDA updated its guidance on general wellness products. MedTech Dive reported that the new guidance concluded blood pressure measurements don't have to be regulated as medical devices when used for wellness.

On June 17, 2026, the FDA sent a closeout letter saying it did not intend to enforce device requirements on Blood Pressure Insights as modified. A Whoop spokesperson told MedTech Dive the company had adjusted the feature, including the boundaries on its dial, so it would not look like clinical classification. Bloomberg described the decision as an about-face, since the FDA had initially asked Whoop to disable the feature.

Healthcare investors were already buying in. Abbott and Mayo Clinic both joined the Series G, and Ahmed told TechCrunch there was "more to come" on the Abbott partnership.

9. Whoop went global, starting with the Gulf

A few years ago, Whoop was mostly an American business. By March 2026, Ahmed told TechCrunch that the business was roughly evenly split between the U.S. and the rest of the world.

The Gulf has been a focus since at least 2018, when UAE71 Capital led the Series C. In May 2024, alongside the Ronaldo deal, Whoop expanded into four Gulf states plus Hong Kong, Israel, Korea and Taiwan, and extended shipping to India, Mexico and Brazil.

Qatar Investment Authority, Mubadala and 2PointZero Group all joined the Series G, which Whoop said would fund expansion across Europe, the Gulf, Latin America and Asia.

In October 2026, Whoop launched a full Arabic-language app and said its Gulf membership was up more than 75% year over year. It has a UAE office, is the official wearable of Al Nassr and the UAE Team Emirates-XRG cycling team, and plans to open its first research facility outside Boston through Whoop Qatar.

How fast did Whoop grow?

Whoop's valuation path has two fast stretches separated by a long pause:

  • 2018: about $125 million post-money after the Series C, according to PitchBook data cited by TechCrunch.
  • October 2020: $1.2 billion after the Series E.
  • August 2021: $3.6 billion after the Series F.
  • March 2026: $10.1 billion after the Series G.

That is roughly 80 times in eight years. But the jump from $3.6 billion to $10.1 billion took four and a half years and included two rounds of layoffs.

On revenue, the clearest numbers are company disclosures:

  • Bookings grew 103% in 2025, and Whoop exited the year at a $1.1 billion bookings run rate.
  • Whoop was operating cash flow positive in 2025.
  • Ahmed told TechCrunch that revenue grew more than 100% in 2025.
  • Research firm Sacra estimates Whoop reached $1.1 billion in annualized revenue exiting 2025. That estimate matches the bookings figure and is not separate data.

Bookings and revenue are not the same thing. Bookings generally count memberships when they are sold, while revenue is recognized over the membership period, so bookings can run ahead of revenue when growth is fast. Ahmed told TechCrunch that bookings best captures a business shipping millions of devices while running a subscription.

At $10.1 billion, Whoop is valued at about 9 times its bookings run rate. Whoop has not published audited revenue, margins or retention, so a full comparison will have to wait for an IPO filing.

The team is growing fast too. Whoop had more than 330 employees in 2020 and planned 600 hires in 2026, and it had made nearly 400 of them by August, Bloomberg reported via Athletech News.

Its closest rival offers a benchmark. Oura's IPO filing showed $1.21 billion in revenue for the nine months to June 30, 2026, up 74%. Oura postponed that IPO on September 29, 2026, citing market uncertainty.

Whoop's growth loop

Whoop's growth comes down to one loop:

  1. Elite athletes wear Whoop because it helps them train and recover.
  2. Their visible use makes the band aspirational to people who train seriously.
  3. A membership with no upfront hardware cost makes it easy to try.
  4. Daily sleep, recovery and strain scores keep members opening the app.
  5. Members renew, and new hardware arrives as part of the membership.
  6. Billions of hours of member data improve the algorithms and the AI coach.
  7. New features and higher tiers, such as Healthspan, ECG and blood testing, raise what members will pay.
  8. More revenue funds more partnerships, international expansion and the next device.

Each step into health, from respiratory rate in 2020 to blood pressure in 2025, gives members another reason to keep wearing the band.

What could slow Whoop down?

The first risk is Oura. Its revenue for nine months beat Whoop's full-year bookings run rate, it showed a profit in its IPO filing and is moving into the same health features. Both companies say women are their fastest-growing segment, and Ahmed told TechCrunch that Whoop still skews more male than female.

The second is subscription fatigue. The 2025 upgrade backlash showed how quickly members react when terms change. A membership model only works while people feel they are getting new value every year.

The third is regulation. The FDA's closeout letter applies only to Blood Pressure Insights as modified, not to any other feature or future change. As Whoop adds more medical features, it will face more of these decisions.

The fourth is copycats. Whoop won a preliminary injunction in February 2026 against a lookalike tracker from Shenzhen Lexqi Electronic Technology, and in October 2025 sued Polar over its screenless Polar Loop, which Polar denies copies Whoop, MobiHealthNews reported. A screenless band is easier to imitate than a smartwatch.

The fifth is execution. Whoop plans to grow headcount by roughly 75% in 2026 while entering new countries and languages, and it has cut staff after a hiring push before.

The last is the IPO window. Ahmed told Bloomberg in August 2026 that an IPO is about 18 months away. Oura's postponed listing shows that timing depends on markets as much as on Whoop.

Borrowing Whoop's athlete word of mouth

Whoop's best marketing came from people who train hard explaining why they wear the band, not from paid endorsements. You can start the same kind of word of mouth where your buyers already talk: Okara's Reddit Agent finds high-intent Reddit threads in your niche and drafts replies you post yourself. The X Agent drafts posts and threads so you can share what your users are achieving.

More startup growth stories

Frequently asked questions

What is Whoop's valuation?

Whoop is valued at $10.1 billion as of October 2026. That price was set by its $575 million Series G in March 2026, led by Collaborative Fund. It was up from $3.6 billion in August 2021 and $1.2 billion in October 2020. Whoop has not announced a newer round, and Ahmed has said he expects the Series G to be its last private round.

What is Whoop's revenue?

Whoop does not publish revenue. The company says its bookings grew 103% in 2025 and it exited the year at a $1.1 billion bookings run rate, while operating cash flow positive. Ahmed told TechCrunch that revenue grew more than 100% in 2025. Sacra estimates about $1.1 billion in annualized revenue, which mirrors the bookings figure.

How much funding has Whoop raised?

Whoop says it has raised more than $900 million in venture capital. Its announced rounds add up to about $980 million: a $3 million seed (2013), $6 million (2014), a $12 million Series B and $3 million from Infosys (2015), a $25 million Series C (2018), a $55 million Series D in equity and debt (2019), a $100 million Series E (2020), a $200 million Series F (2021) and a $575 million Series G (2026). Collaborative Fund led both the seed and the Series G.

Who founded Whoop?

Will Ahmed founded Whoop in 2012 with fellow Harvard students John Capodilupo and Aurelian Nicolae. Ahmed, a former captain of the Harvard squash team, is still CEO.

How many members does Whoop have?

Whoop said it had more than 2.5 million members in March 2026. CNBC reported more than 2.7 million users in June 2026. Whoop says it ships to 56 countries and that its business is now roughly evenly split between the U.S. and the rest of the world.

How much does Whoop cost?

Whoop sells annual memberships with the band included. Whoop One costs $199 a year, Whoop Peak $239 and Whoop Life $359, which includes the Whoop MG device with ECG and blood pressure features. Advanced Labs blood testing is an add-on starting at $199 a year.

Is Whoop going public?

Not yet. Whoop has not filed for an IPO as of October 2026. Ahmed told Bloomberg in August 2026 that he expects an IPO in about 18 months, and the company plans to roughly double its Boston headquarters ahead of it.

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