This week's big theme
What Happens When We Stop Looking?
I'm writing this week's newsletter from Bali. Cue the collective eye rolls. But being away from the screens for a few days has got me thinking about where all of this is heading.
This week EGYM and Playlist closed a $7.5bn merger and Whoop raised another $575m. Every major player is making the same bet - that your body will generate data continuously and that you will keep finding it interesting.
Facebook made the same bet about your social life. Instagram about your attention. Tinder about dating. But people are tired and turning to run clubs, retreats and dumb phones to get away from the overwhelm.
Health data might follow the same arc. Not tomorrow - the category is genuinely useful. But the recovery score that once felt like insight starts to feel like noise, and the Strava feed gets as exhausting as the Instagram explore page.
The biggest challenge facing health tech right now is not how to provide more data. It is how to make less of it feel like it actually matters.
Industry News
MHRA investigates UK peptide clinics over health claims (theguardian.com)
The UK medicines regulator is investigating whether clinics are breaking the law by making medicinal claims for unregulated, experimental peptide therapies. These substances are being touted for everything from anti-ageing to injury recovery, despite a near-total absence of human clinical evidence.
Why it matters: The biohacking boom is hitting a regulatory wall. "Research only" labels won't protect you if your marketing is making medicinal claims - the MHRA has made that explicit. For founders in the longevity and performance space, compliance belongs in your product roadmap, not just your legal team.
Technogym tops €1bn in record year (insider.fitt.co)
The Italian fitness equipment giant has surpassed €1bn in annual revenue for the first time, driven by a 13% surge in gym, clinic and hospitality sales. Profit rose 33% to €120m as the company doubles down on its AI-driven healthy longevity ecosystem.
Why it matters: Technogym is proving the premium B2B segment is where the real scale is. The bet that upscale gyms and health clinics will pay significantly more for equipment inside a longevity narrative is landing. If you are building in that space, positioning is as important as product.
The $7.5bn EGYM x Playlist merger officially closes (athletechnews.com)
The combination of EGYM and Playlist is now complete, backed by $785m in new equity. The deal brings together Mindbody, ClassPass and EGYM's smart hardware under one roof to build a full-stack operating system for fitness.
Why it matters: The deal brings booking, gym management, corporate wellness and connected equipment under one roof for the first time. For anyone building in this space, that closed loop is now the reality you're designing around.
Whoop sues Bevel in trade dress showdown (the5krunner.com)
Whoop has filed a lawsuit against software-only competitor Bevel, alleging that Bevel's app interface copies Whoop's look and feel. Bevel is fighting back, pointing to timestamps that suggest they actually had the layout seventeen months before Whoop 5.0 launched.
Why it matters: Whoop is clearing the decks ahead of its IPO by protecting its visual identity. If it wins, it sets a precedent that app interface design is as protectable as hardware. Bevel says it has the funding to see this through to trial - so we'll find out.
Investment Updates
Whoop, $575m Series G (techfundingnews.com) - Whoop raised $575m at a $10.1bn valuation, led by Collaborative Fund with participation from Mayo Clinic and a roster of athlete investors, ahead of a confirmed public listing.
Jimini Health, $17m Seed (techfundingnews.com) - New York-based Jimini Health raised $17m led by M13 to scale its clinician-supervised AI platform for behavioural health.
Semarion, $3.8m (tech.eu) - Cambridge-based Semarion raised $3.8m led by Parkwalk to scale its SemaCyte cell assay technology for drug discovery.
Audicin, $1.9m (tech.eu) - Finnish neurotech startup Audicin raised $1.9m, backed by Oura co-founder Petteri Lahtela, to scale its brainwave-based nervous system regulation technology for wearables.
Lucida Medical, £8.7m (cambridgenetwork.co.uk) - Cambridge-based Lucida Medical closed an £8.7m round led by IW Capital for its AI-driven prostate cancer diagnosis technology, already live across 15 NHS hospitals.
Podcast Episode Trailer
Dan Strang, Co-Founder, Coopah
Dan Strang is co-founder of Coopah, an AI running coach built to give every runner access to expert, personalised training guidance. This is a preview of the upcoming full episode - watch the trailer now.
Roles Worth Knowing About
Senior AI Engineer - Oura
Remote
Oura sits at an $11bn valuation and is one of the few health wearables with genuine daily habit - millions of people check the app every morning. This role works on the AI systems behind Oura's coaching layer, building and evaluating the models that turn biometric data into something worth acting on.
Senior AI Engineer - Ada Health
Berlin or Remote (UK)
Ada has built a genuinely unusual architecture - a hybrid AI engine combining probabilistic graphical models with generative AI to deliver medical reasoning that is both explainable and clinically robust. The role sits inside that engine, building, validating and scaling the system to medical device regulation standards.
Lead/Staff Product Designer - ZOE
Remote (UK)
ZOE ran the world's largest nutrition science study and built a consumer health platform around it - gut microbiome testing, personalised food scores, AI coaching. The role owns two things: leading high-impact product design across squads and full stewardship of ZOE's Design System from Figma to code.
Founding Backend Engineer - Asterix Health
London - In Person
Asterix is building DoctorOS - a clinical AI platform backed by Entrepreneur First and already live with major NHS providers. As Founding Backend Engineer you own the full stack from day one: LLM evaluation pipelines, clinical document processing and NHS data integrations. £70-90k with equity.
Research Engineer - Relation Therapeutics
London - Hybrid
Relation has $116m raised, NVIDIA as a compute partner and active collaborations with GSK, Novartis and Deerfield - one of the more serious TechBio plays in London. The role sits inside their research and engineering team, developing and scaling the ML systems at the core of their drug discovery platform.
That's it for Issue #5.
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