Zepp Health, the parent company of the Amazfit brand, has acquired Wild.ai, a mobile application that provides individualized insights for women based on physiological data. The financial details of the acquisition remain undisclosed.
Wild.ai, known for its integration with wearable devices like Oura, has collaborated with Zepp Health for the past year to co-develop a mini-app tailored for Amazfit users.
In a bid to enhance its presence in the U.S. market, Zepp has made significant moves, including establishing partnerships with notable athletes such as NFL star Derrick Henry and Olympic gold medalist Gabby Thomas. The company has placed a particular focus on engaging female consumers.
Gareth Jones, Vice President of Strategic Business Development & Investment at Zepp, reported that the company’s consumer products have traditionally had a 75% male user base. He highlighted the inadequacy in training programs for women, likening it to “trying to refuel a diesel car with petrol.”
Helene Guillaume, Founder and CEO of Wild.ai, will join Zepp’s team. She emphasized that female physiology encompasses more than just menstruation tracking and stressed the importance of research-based applications, citing insights from experts like Dr. Stacy Sims.
Guillaume noted, “They really understood that, and for them it was a priority. Many companies have done a few efforts, but the reality is that women are still really badly served by all the other wearables and working with them really showed a massive difference.”
While Wild.ai will continue to offer integrations with other wearable products, it will now be embedded within the Amazfit ecosystem. This transition aims to expand its reach from hundreds of thousands of users, which includes elite athletes and women’s professional soccer teams, to potentially millions.
Recently, Zepp relocated its headquarters from China to the Netherlands. Under Gareth Jones’s leadership, who previously led Fitbit’s expansion in Europe, the company aims to reposition the brand from being geographically niche to a dominant player in the smartwatch market.
Jones stated, “Our objectives are, simplistically, to become a brand which people consider every time they think about buying a smartwatch — to elevate us beyond what we were previously, which was, shall we say, geographically niche, maybe even just simply thought of as a budget type product.”
Recent positive headlines have bolstered investor confidence in Zepp, with share prices rising from approximately $3 in early July to over $53 earlier this month, despite trading at $46 during the publication of this article. The earnings report from August reflected a year-over-year growth of 46.2%.
In addition to Henry and Thomas, Zepp has secured endorsements from several American athletes, including Olympic runners Morgan Pearson and Grant Fisher, college basketball star Rori Harmon from Texas, and three-time Hyrox world champion Hunter McIntyre. Moreover, Amazfit is now the official wearable partner and timekeeper for Hyrox events.
Jones explained, “The credibility of our hardware and online services, for the first time, have come to the standard where these types of athletes can themselves benefit from using the products because we did not want it to be a checkbook exercise. We did not want it to be, ‘Oh, we bought some visibility.’”
