Jawbone’s ignominious fall as a unicorn wearables company included mass layoffs, unfortunate product pivots and legal spats with competitors like FitBit and Apple.
When the Jawbone eventually shuttered in 2017 after raising more than $900 million in venture capital funding, its liquidated assets were put on the market.
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
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With the help of Dubai-based investment group Meraas, Jawbone founder Hosain Rahman purchased the company’s health assets with the plans to relaunch the business.
Last year, Rahman told Recode that he was reviving the company as Jawbone Health, moving the focus of the company away from fitness tracking and toward remote patient monitoring.
The company is looking to create a medical subscription service that functions as “check-engine light” for users, Rahman said at the time.
Now, according to a new SEC filing, the company has raised $65 million on its way to that goal.
Rahman is listed as an executive officer and director for the San Francisco-based company. Also listed as a director is Ali Hashemi, an investor with Polymath Ventures, who previously founded Dubai-based healthcare provider Amana Healthcare.
Former Google executive and current Refractor Capital chairperson David Lee and SignalFire CEO Chris Farmer are also listed as directors for the company.
LinkedIn lists 51 employees of Jawbone Health, many of whom previously worked at Jawbone.
The company’s stated mission is to “catch lifestyle diseases early for its members, and help them manage these new conditions as well as pre-existing ones— so they can live healthier, happier and longer.”
What exact form this will take is still up in the air, although continuous health tracking through wearables seem central to the concept.
What is clear though, is that Jawbone Health is re-emerging into a crowded field alongside some of the company’s previous rivals in the consumer wearables space, which have been increasingly growing their health monitoring capabilities.
Photo: Abscent84, Getty Images
