Stablecoin issuer Tether led a $50 million strategic investment round in sleep-technology startup Eight Sleep to help the company integrate artificial-intelligence agents into its products. The round values Eight Sleep at $1.5 billion and follows a $100 million raise last August. Eight Sleep focuses on sleep-health products, primarily bedding and supplements.
In its announcement, Tether said it believes “technologies that can turn continuous health data into clear, practical insights will shape the future of consumer health and wellness.” Tether will work with Eight Sleep to bring AI-based health technology to market, leveraging Tether’s QVAC architecture and its edge-intelligence capabilities to enhance Eight Sleep products.
Tether has been deploying its capital beyond crypto into sectors including gold, media, biotechnology and AI, and has pursued investments ranging from gold platforms to attempts to buy professional football clubs. QVAC, launched in December, is a privacy-focused health-tech service designed to consolidate bio-health data from multiple devices and services (for example, smart rings) into a single platform, supported by local on-device AI for data management and insights.
Eight Sleep plans to build a sleep-focused AI agent for its Pod sleep system. The Pod already adjusts bed temperature, elevation and sound automatically based on metrics such as heart rate, breathing, snoring, time asleep and sleep stages, and includes existing AI integrations for sleep-health tracking. The new funding is intended to evolve the company’s AI tools and capabilities beyond current offerings.
Matteo Franceschetti, Eight Sleep’s CEO and co-founder, said the company has “built the most seamless AI-powered health sensing system in the world,” and that the Tether partnership provides infrastructure to extend that intelligence “beyond the Pod, into every aspect of personal health.” On X, Franceschetti added that Eight Sleep is developing a predictive agent trained on more than 1 billion hours of sleep data and is advancing FDA filings for sleep-apnea detection — aiming for a passive, nightly system with “no wires, no clinic visits.”
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