Ava Raises $30 Million for Fertility Tracking Wristband
*By Christian Smith*
Ava, the medtech company that makes wristbands for women tracking their fertility, announced Wednesday that it raised $30 million in Series B funding, money its co-founder said would be used to continue the company's research.
"Women's health and women's health research has been underfunded for the last decade," Lea von Bidder, Ava's co-founder, said in an interview with Cheddar. "We want to do a lot of research in different fields of women's health ー be it pregnancy monitoring, be it contraception, be it menopause ーand hope to give women insights about their body and health."
Ava conducts its research through clinical trials with the University Hospital of Zurich, where the company was founded in 2014.
Its wearable tracker is like a Fitbit for fertility, monitoring nine physiological metrics including heart and breathing rates, skin temperature, and heat loss to determine a woman's fertility cycle. Von Bidder said the company's research shows that the device is 89 percent accurate in predicting the 5.3 fertile days in a woman's cycle. In addition to the tracker, Ava also offers an app, which tracks a woman's health during her pregnancy.
So far, 10,000 babies have been born to mothers using the Ava tracker, the company announced on Wednesday.
Ava's founder said they want to offer contraception and family-planning products, too, but the company doesn't have a time frame for these types of products.
"Ava at this point is not a contraceptive yet," von Bidden said. "We are working really hard on making that happen."
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/fertility-tracking-company-ava-raises-30-million-in-series-b-funding-round).
If you're shopping on Amazon and want to save even more money after Prime Day, Cheddar News has got you covered. Senior reporter Michelle Castillo talked to the experts at the company to find out how you can keep an eye on deals and even get cash back on your household purchases.
Did you happen to watch the series The Bear? The show follows a struggling small business owner in Chicago who is trying to save his business. It's a story a lot of small business owners in the U.S. can relate to. To help out these struggling entrepreneurs, Cheddar News brought on an expert here to help take your company from stressful to successful.
The sticker prices for Ford's F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks are being lowered by thousands of dollars across the board, the company said Monday, due to increased plant capacity, falling costs for battery raw materials and internal efforts to scale production by the Detroit automaker.
United Airlines and the union representing its pilots said Saturday they reached agreement on a contract that will raise pilot pay by up to 40% over four years.
The court’s ruling applies to higher education institutions and other entities that receive federal funding and doesn’t directly change private employer obligations, but business leaders might pull back diversity, equity and inclusion programs to avoid lawsuits.
