Beddit brings total funding to $8 million

    The Finns behind the crazy sleep-tracking technology, Beddit, announce they’ve raised investment from Inventure, bringing their total funding to $8 million (€6.18 million), including their $500,000 seed round and most certainly some prior funding. With the funding the company says they will be strengthening their distribution channels in the U.S., as well as pumping more money into their R&D program.

    Beddit, to those of you unfamiliar with the company, debuted on Indiegogo as one of the most successful Finnish crowdfunding projects, raising just over half a million dollars of its $80,000 goal. Their technology is a thin ribbon of sensitive force sensors you place under your bedsheets, which allow Beddit to record data on how often you toss an turn – and even accurately measure your breathing rates and heartbeats. An overview of the product can be found in our first article.

    The technology was demoed to us before their launch last year, and it’s a really remarkable product. Lasse Leppakorpi, CEO, Beddit, put a sensor under the leg of the chair he was sitting on, and using a more medical grade laptop demo (not the Beddit app) you could see clearly his real-time heartbeats and breaths. The app itself, which connects to the device over bluetooth, measures the user’s resting heart rate, respiratory rate and movement during sleep, which provides you an easily understandable sleep score, and gives you coaching tips on how to get a better night’s sleep.

    Perhaps due to the scale of their crowdfunding success or their own communication failures, many users who pre-ordered in the Indiegogo campaign complained on Beddit’s Indiegogo page about the lack of promised android app availability and un-received orders.

    With that behind them, the company still should be in good position to target the huge number of American adults who suffer from sleep problems, and could use some insight.

    “While helping out stressed and restless people to sleep and feel better, we’re looking at improving the understanding of the key factors affecting a good night’s sleep,” said Lasse Leppakorpi, CEO, Beddit. “The funding enables us to reach wider audiences through a stronger distribution network, with a target of nationwide US availability by Christmas. In addition, we’ll continue improving our service to offer the best consumer experience available.”