Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James is just one of the high-profile investors in the new round of funding for the WHOOP personal health platform.
Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
If ESPN married the Wall Street Journal, the guest list might read like the list of the investors who just gave the artificial intelligence-powered WHOOP health platform more than a half billion dollars.
The company’s wearable connects to an analystics platform that promises its data will do nothing less than help users “extend healthspan, optimize performance and prevent disease before it begins.” That potential won WHOOP a Series G investment of $575 million and a valuation of $10.1 billion from, in the company’s words, “the world’s most sophisticated investors, leading health institutions and iconic global athletes.”
The name-dropping is impeccably impressive. On the sports side, a partial list includes LeBron James, one of the greatest basketball players in history; Cristiano Ronaldo, a candidate for that same honor in what we call soccer and the rest of the world calls football; and Rory McIlroy, who during his career was ranked the number one golfer in the world for over 100 weeks. On the finance side there is the Qatar Investment Authority; the Mubadala Investment Company, the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates; and Abu Dhabi’s giant 2PointZero Group. To show the health care industry’s support for the happy couple, you’ve got Abbott Laboratories and the Mayo Clinic.
The entire round, meanwhile, was led by the Collaborative Fund, whose mission “is to identify and support companies that live at the intersection of for-profit and for-good.”
Performance vs. Promises
Right now, the “for-good” part requires an asterisk. The WHOOP press release says its biometric monitoring system “has become an essential platform for those committed to performing and living at their highest level.” However, it remains less clear the extent to which the platform will be adopted by those for whom performing and living at the “highest level” is less of a concern that simply having adequate health and wealth to enjoy life with family and friends.
The WHOOP device, worn on the wrist or body, is meant to track “optimal sleep” and monitor resting heart rate and heart rate variability, as well as key metrics “scientifically proven to make the most significant impact on your health.” It will do this “powered by more than 24 billion hours of physiological data and purpose-built AI models,” providing “predictive, personalized health insights” – at least, as long as you continue paying your annual membership fee.
And why wouldn’t you, when, as WHOOP explains about its “health operating system,” you will now have the opportunity to expand your “healthspan” to an extent that, the company implies, would be the envy of Egyptian pharaohs, China’s first emperor and Ponce de Leon.
The device certainly has enthusiasts. Others, however, are more restrained in their endorsement. A June, 2025 review by John O’Connor, founder of a company that uses a proprietary algorithm to recommend a personalized diet based on genetics (perhaps the ideal WHOOP user), compared the company’s strap to the Oura ring, also a biometric tracker. O’Connor goes down a list of personal pros and cons – I wonder whether those world-class athletes get annoyed by the product getting wet in the shower? – but concludes that the product, “especially when worn for years, is a good window into your current state of health.”
In that same modest vein, an article in the journal Sensor examined nearly a million days and nights of longitudinal data from WHOOP subscribers (with the company’s participation in the study) and concluded there was “real-world evidence that sustained wearable engagement may support healthier habits and improved physiological outcomes over time.”
Not quite pharaonic, but certainly encouraging.
The Big Picture
Last October, Oura raised $900 million in a Series E round that valued it at $11 billion, although the Finnish company failed to cite a single famous athlete as a participant. What both the WHOOP and Oura capital raises have in common – and there are other companies competing in this space – is that they significantly raise the profile of what the academics call “patient-reported health data” by demonstrating the potential of AI to significantly improve the degree to which this type of information can be made personally and clinically relevant and actionable.
The breadth of metrics that are measured accurately and consistently isn’t quite where it needs to be, nor is the wearability comfort. But, of course, LeBron, Renaldo and McIlroy didn’t start off as world champions, either. When we do get there, perhaps LeBron, now known as “King James,” will assume the title of “PROM King.” That, of course, would refer to “patient-reported outcome measures.”
