Whoop founder says wearable devices can help people manage mental health

Whoop founder and CEO Will Ahmed recently told Yahoo Finance that wearable devices can help individuals bolster their mental health by providing key data about their bodies.

There's a connection between sleep and mental health, and tracking the latter can provide vital insights on the latter, according to Ahmed, whose company makes fitness trackers.

He said we've been doing a lot of research about mental health. One of the things that Whoop measures is is sleep, and we've been able to show that getting more consistent sleep. Apple AAPL Samsung, and Xiaomi are some of the biggest names in the wearables space. In recent years, wearables have gained a lot of popularity as Apple and Google-owned GOOG, GOOGL Fitbit have gained more widespread usage and step-tracking smartwatches have made their way into popular culture. In the year 2021, sales for the worldwide wearable market hit 533.6 million units, up 20% from the previous year, according to consumer research firm IDC.

Ahmed believes that the future of the smartwatch is in easing your mind and that's why we traditionally think of it as a step counter or heart rate monitor.

He says that wearables can help users manage stress on a moment-to- moment basis and over time, as well as train the consumer to operate under stress similar to what an elite athlete might do.

He said that professional athletes are able to control the way under which they feel under a lot of stress. It's not necessarily that they don't feel stressed at all. It's that they've learned how to cope with it. That's something that Whoop helps its members do, because they understand what I can do to live in a state of comfort and happiness. Boston-based Whoop raised $400 million since it was founded about a decade ago, and SoftBank's Vision Fund led the company's latest round of funding, a Series F, according to Crunchbase.

The investor group of Whoop includes some of the biggest names in sports, a fact that's important, given the ambitions of the company. Whoop's investors include current and former NFL stars Patrick Mahomes, Eli Manning, and Larry Fitzgerald, NBA superstar Kevin Durant, and pro golfers Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas.

The wearables space is competitive and could be even more competitive in the coming years. Google is preparing to launch the Google Pixel Watch, a direct competitor to the market-dominating Apple Watch. The Pixel Watch is the first product to emerge after Google's 2021 $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit.

Competition and adoption of wearables have been driven by the pandemic. Ahmed said Whoop's membership has grown enormously through the epidemic, but he didn't reveal numbers. The American Psychological Association conducted a survey conducted in 2019 that showed how Americans' public discourse about mental health had begun to open up prior to COVID - 19, according to a report by the American Psychological Association.

He told Yahoo Finance that this is an exciting time for health monitoring and especially for Whoop, and the potential to continuously measure the human body. Mental health is one of the most important topics on a lot of people's minds. Mental health is at the forefront of the global pandemic, and we've been dealing with it.