cointelegraph.com
Stablecoin firm Tether has led a $50 million strategic investment round in sleep technology startup Eight Sleep, to help the company integrate artificial intelligence agents into its sleep tech products.
The latest funding round was announced on Tuesday, with Eight Sleep raising $50 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. It follows a $100 million raise last August. The firm specializes in sleep health products, primarily across bedding and supplements.
In an announcement on Tuesday, Tether expressed its strong conviction in health technology for supporting “longevity, performance, and disease prevention,” and will collaborate with Eight Sleep to bring artificial intelligence-based health technology products to the market.
Tether has been using its stockpile of capital to invest in a wide range of areas outside of crypto. Its investments span the gold sector, media, biotechnology and AI. The firm also made multiple attempts to buy professional football clubs.
“Technologies that can turn continuous health data into clear, practical insights will shape the future of consumer health and wellness,” Tether said.
“The investment is designed to empower Eight Sleep and establish a long-term collaboration to build advanced AI-driven health technology using, among others, Tether’s QVAC architecture and leveraging QVAC’s edge intelligence to enhance Eight Sleep products,” it added.
Tether’s QVAC is a privacy-focused health tech service launched in December that enables users to integrate their bio-health data from multiple services or products like smart rings, into a singular platform, which is supported by a local on-device AI to help users with data management and health insights.
Eight Sleep has stated that it plans to build a sleep-focused AI agent, which will be used to support its Pod, a sleep tech product that automatically adjusts bed temperature, elevation, and sound based on factors like heart rate, breathing, snoring, time asleep, and sleep stages.
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The Pod already has AI integrations to track sleep health data; however, Eight Sleep has said the funding will help evolve the company’s current AI tools and capabilities.
“We’ve built the most seamless AI-powered health sensing system in the world, and this partnership with Tether gives us the infrastructure to take that intelligence beyond the Pod, into every aspect of personal health,” noted Franceschetti as part of Tether’s announcement.
On X, Franceschetti gave more detail and said Eight Sleep is now building a predictive agent trained on over 1 billion hours of sleep data; meanwhile, it is also “advancing FDA filings for sleep apnea detection.”
“Passive. Every night. No wires, no clinic visits,” he said.
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