Eight Sleep raises $100M, targets FDA approval for sleep apnea and menopause, and eyes China expansion

great to have you on.

We'll see you on LinkedIn.

Have a good one.

Cheers.

We got to hop on with Matteo from Sleep. Get that gong ready, Jordy Hayes. There's some big news. Oh, I would love to take a crack. Thank you.

Let's bring in Matteo from sleep. What you got for us, Matteo? What's the news for today?

We just raised 100 million.

Oh, there we go.

Congratulations.

Uh,

yeah,

it's great to see you. Uh, give us

Yeah, great to see you again, guys. Excited to be here again.

Hasn't been very long. Um, it's great to be back. Uh, give us give us the update on on on everything. How did how did this round come together? talk about the progress. Um, we want the full we want the full pitch.

Yeah, of course. I mean, this is a massive milestone for us. You know, we just announced 100 million in new funding. Total funding to date is a quarter of a billion.

There we go.

Um, so, uh, not bad. Um, but I think the best news honestly is, uh, we have been free cash flow positive for the whole year.

Wow. We have been it's cash flow positive

for most of the past 10 quarters.

So the good news is we we didn't need the money. The company is in a really strong financial position, but um we have a very ambitious plan and we found a couple of uh great investors including our existing investors that they wanted to come in and so of the existing investors Valor uh with Antonio Gracias first investor in Tesla um Panders Fund YC um and a few others and then also HSG that will help us to really scale China and and Asia. So right now we are in 30 countries uh but the next big piece is uh Asia particularly in China and I think that alone could double our our business.

Yeah. Yeah. Talk more about about China. Obviously you've been advertising with F1. It's an incredibly global sport. Uh everyone sleeps regardless of what country they're in. Uh what's the shape of the opportunity there? Is there is there an opportunity on the supply chain side, the distribution side, the customer side? Uh is there have you not been cloned already? I feel like there would be a an eightle knockoff over there. How are you going to beat them if they'd already exist?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think I think my immediate reaction is is uh there

this is a very it's it's a simple product to understand simple product to use as a consumer but incredibly

difficult to clone more so than like a toaster right like you have this

hardware software dynamic of dealing with with uh the elements right uh it's not as uh

uh it's closer it's closer in some ways to um you need to use it intensely every single day obviously but anyways

yeah let me step back for a second and then I'll answer your question right so we will use the money in in in a couple of different ways so the the first one is we will double down on AI and I would like to share a bit more with you because we working on some crazy things will be medical uh so we are going to file for FDA in a couple of different dimensions including sleep apnea I think will be really big and so you will see basically becoming more and more medical but still consumer medical um and then international expansion with China.

Does the sorry really quickly on the FDA side does that unlock paying with insurance? Is there a change to the financial business model or is that really just about uh coming to the consumer with stronger claims and evidence about the efficacy of the product?

Both. But the real goal is the first one you mentioned, right? Imagine if the pod our technology could be uh reimburseable uh or at least partially covered by your insurance and that is where we have identified a couple of really good opportunities. Again, sleep apnea is one but menopause is another one where women have hot flashes. So we just released what is called hot flash mode. And so if you have a hot flash in the middle of the night, you just tap on the side of the bed and immediately it will start immediately cooling.

Interesting. And there are like thousands of women that now are finally able to sleep again because of our product.

And I bet with AI, you could detect those hot flashes eventually and just have it do. Right. Yeah.

Exactly.

Then on the eye side, we are doing two really really cool things at least for me. Uh so on one side we are working on uh what we call a sleep agent, but is really a PhD level sleep coach that is able to simulate your night before you even go to bed. H and so it uses the history of your data. It uses the data from the day through Apple Health or any other data source and will start simulating the night in a couple of different ways and then we'll adjust accordingly as you fall asleep. And then there is this other agent that we really call the longevity twins. And so for each users there will be thousands of longevity twins that simulate your health for the next 10 and 20 years. and they will come back with the likelihood that you develop a certain health outcome. So we are really transitioning from sleep that is the foundation of health into longevity and will help people expand and extend more than expand extended their lifespan and health them.

Yeah, it's really interesting to think about if you can understand somebody's sleep habits today you can predict what their health will look like in a decade, two decades etc. Um, uh, feature request. Uh, bit of bit of a wild one. Uh, but if, uh, in the future if you could get a Tesla Optimus robot that would physically come and pull me away from my desk late at night and shut the computer off, unplug the Wi-Fi and drag me, you know, to force me to sleep. I think there could be something there. So, may maybe a partnership with Elon at some point.

Um,

yeah.

Um, well, amazing. Anything else uh top of mind or you got to get back to uh business?

Big things is also a lot of products coming. Uh so you will see new hardware coming uh coming coming in next year. Uh a lot of different products and uh we'll keep doubling down on making the pod better and better.

Fantastic. Well, if you're listening and you want a pod five, go to eight.com and thank you for joining us, Matteo. Always a pleasure.

You're the man.