Sleep tracking tech company Eight Sleep has raised $14 million in a new round of funding, which the brand says it’ll use to expand distribution of its ever-growing line of products.
Eight Sleep was founded in 2014 with the goal of being as much a leader in the technology sphere as in the bed-in-a-box industry. In this vein, the brand has always sought to improve users’ sleep not only with comfortable mattresses, but also with advanced sleep tracking tech.
To develop its suite of sleeping goods, the company launched a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2015, which raked in over $1.2 million from backers. The following year, Eight Sleep was able to raise an additional $6 million in seed funding, which combined with the $14 million gained in 2018 via Khosla Ventures, puts the total funding well into the $20 million range.
“In 2014 we founded this company with a mission to use technology to improve sleep,” CEO and co-founder Matteo Franceschetti wrote on Eight’s website. “With this new funding, our growing team and investors reaffirm the commitment we made in 2014 to bringing the biggest technological evolution that sleep has seen in the last 300 years.”
This technological evolution is centered upon the brand’s line of sleep-tracking mattresses, which use a special Smart Technology Cover to monitor everything from a sleeper’s heart rate to their nighttime movements. Once this data has been gleaned, users can check it out on their smart phones with the Eight Sleep App, which provides them with recommendations on how they can get a better night’s rest.
But the tech doesn’t stop there! The cover also has built-in temperature control, smart alarms and can be fully integrated into other smart home products such as the Amazon Alexa. And if users want the technology without the bed, they can buy it separately for $399 and place it onto any standard-size mattress. While this sounds pretty impressive, Franceschetti is hoping that the new relationship with Khosla will allow the company to do even more with sleep technology.
“The partnership with Khosla is a clear fit for us. They share our vision of a future in which technology and data make healthcare more scientific and consistent,” Franceschetti wrote. “As we continue to redesign the traditional concept of a mattress, we are uncovering the possibilities that tracking biometric signals holds in furthering human healthcare.”
Does the Eight Sleep sound like the mattress of your dreams? Check out our Eight Sleep mattress review. And if you like what you see, you can check out their site here.
We have a Leesa, and it’s insanely comfortable. My partner and I are long distance for part of the year right now, and my “main” mattress is a crappy one from the mattress store around the corner. I look forward to visiting him for the mattress as well as the person! 😉 Important note: my partner has bad allergies, and so we tried to put a cover on the Leesa mattress (like you’re supposed to on any mattress for those with allergies), and it totally interfered with the soft comfort of the mattress. We took the cover off. So, something to keep in mind if you need to use a cover on your mattress, you might not be able to fully enjoy the Leesa. I have no idea what other brands are like.