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- [00:01]
IBM Representative
The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across hr, IT and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM,
- [00:33]
Bloomberg Audio Studios Announcer
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
- [00:38]
Matt (Interviewer)
Let's switch gears though, and talk about completely and talk about wearable health tech company Whoop. It's announced it raised $575 million in a series G funding that values the company at more than 10 billion in total. And here to discuss the latest round is Will Ahmed, the CEO of woop. Will, great to have you on. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a longtime woop wearer. I'm on a 390 day streak. Right. And it's nice to see your valuation up to more than 10 billion. That's around the same, I notice, as Aura. And so I'm wondering what you think about what must be your biggest competitor. I mean, is there room in this space for two powerful companies or is this, you know, winner take all scenario?
- [01:21]
Will Ahmed (CEO of Whoop)
Well, thanks for having me on, Matt, and thanks for being a longtime group member. I appreciate that. You know, if I, if I actually just look back over the last decade because I founded Whoop in 2012, so I've been building this company for 14 years. There's been enormous number of players in the space over the years. In the early days, you had, you know, big wearable or big sports apparel brands. Excuse me. So you had the Nike, Under Armour, Adidas, Puma crowd. You then had entries from the tech market. So you had Microsoft and Google and intel and Amazon, Metta. And so there's been a lot of players, I would say broadly in the wearable space. Today there's actually maybe the fewest number of players that I've seen in the last five years. And yet the wearables market has grown enormously. You know, when I first started the company, I think less than 5 million wearables were sold a year. Now that figure is 300 to 400 million devices a year and continues to grow. So we're very excited about where the company's positioned and we think we're still in the early days despite the maturity of the business.
- [02:24]
Matt (Interviewer)
So, you know, I'm obviously a customer and so many people here around me are customers. Do they stay? Do we Stay. Are you, are you retaining customers? Those that have 12 month subscriptions, are they going to 24? Are they renewing?
- [02:39]
Will Ahmed (CEO of Whoop)
Well, we recently actually launched three membership tiers. So it used to be you can sign up for $240 a year. Now there's a lower plan and a higher plan, $360 a year for WHOOP Life. And we've actually seen an overwhelming number of people migrate from our middle tier to our highest tier. And that demonstrates, I think, that our members are willing to pay for enhanced features, premium capabilities, an additional medical sensing portfolio that we've rolled out. So now WHOOP has ECG monitoring with AFIB detection. We've come out with blood pressure ins sites which were the first wearable to do. We recently launched advanced labs, which is blood testing. So overwhelmingly we see our members wanting to invest more in their health. With whoop, they're buying additional services, they're moving up in their membership tier. And then in addition to that, we have some of the best user engagement in all of health. Our members are opening the WHOOP app eight times a day, which is pretty extraordinary user engagement. We've an 83% down MAO ratio, which I believe is second only to WhatsApp in terms of how often people are using and engagement, aging with the product. So it really speaks to, I think, the value that we've been able to create and the fact that our members are in fact improving their health.
- [03:50]
Matt (Interviewer)
I, you know, I think about all this stuff that you can do and I see the labs myself as well, and the blood pressure monitoring you can not predict, but, you know, you can see whether you're in line for a stroke or a heart attack. Is this a fitness company or is it like a clinical diagnostics tool?
- [04:10]
Will Ahmed (CEO of Whoop)
Well, we want to build the most powerful personal health platform, platform in the world. And we see that as an evolution from fitness and sports, which is our origins, to now working very broadly across health and medical capabilities. You know, two of our investors in this latest financing were Mayo Clinic and Abbott. Mayo Clinic, of course, being one of the best health institutions in the entire world. And we're going to be announcing a lot of research with the Mayo Clinic and Abbott, of course, being one of the best medical device makers in the world. And we're going to be announcing more with them as well. And so I think this overall financing really shows the past and the history of whoop with the athletes coming in, Cristiano Ronaldo, Rory McIlroy and now LeBron James, as well as the future of WHOOP with Many of these health strategics.
- [04:58]
Matt (Interviewer)
You need to get some squash players, you need to sponsor some squash players here.
- [05:01]
Will Ahmed (CEO of Whoop)
Well, we love squash. I've played squash my entire life. Ali Farag, former world number one, is a good friend and a WHOOP member. So we'll do more in squash.
- [05:10]
Matt (Interviewer)
You are cash flow positive. I mean, you're making money. So why raise this additional half a billion dollars plus now?
- [05:19]
Will Ahmed (CEO of Whoop)
Well, we want to accelerate a lot of the work that we're doing. We think the opportunity to own health monitoring and integrate deeply into the health care system is now just completely up for grabs. And there's only a few players in the market and we really want to attack the opportunity. So we're going to be leaning in on research and development. We've announced that we're hiring 600 roles this year, really across every single function. So we're actually growing our headcount 80%, which seems to be a counter narrative move right now. And then we're also growing internationally. So we've brought in some really great strategic investors from around the world, sovereign wealth funds like QIA and 2.0 and mobile and others. And we're going to be investing heavily in growth around the world.
- [06:03]
Matt (Interviewer)
How can you put AI to work? And I know you already have an AI assistant on your platform. Obviously I'm on there many times a day. But how much do you think it can be improved?
- [06:15]
Will Ahmed (CEO of Whoop)
Well, I think ultimately WHOOP will either make you healthier or it will save your life. And those are really the two areas of development for whoop. And as we think about coaching and alerting, those are the two areas that we're investing in. And so we do believe that AI sitting on top of all of this data is going to be able to deliver value in those categories. I think it's inevitable that a huge percentage of humanity will be continuously wearing a health monitor. And it's going to make you healthier or it's going to save your life one day.
- [06:45]
Matt (Interviewer)
Will you go public before that? I mean, I think I read Series G, right. We're getting pretty far along in the Alphabet. When is the IPO plan for?
- [06:53]
Will Ahmed (CEO of Whoop)
Well, we still see it on the horizon of 18 to 24 months. You know, fortunately, Whoop's operating cash flow positive. We've just added 575 million to our balance sheet. So we've got a very strong balance sheet and it allows us to be, I think, really thoughtful and control our destiny enroute to ipo.
- [07:10]
Matt (Interviewer)
All right, well, great having you on set. Thanks so much for joining us, Will Ahmed there, the CEO of woop.
- [07:16]
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- [08:29]
Bloomberg Audio Studios Announcer
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