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).
Summer camps across the country will open this month, but parents may experience some sticker shock. With the cost of goods and services rising, so is the price of camp. Cheddar’s Ashley Mastronardi spoke to experts who shed some light on how this will affect your wallet.
Living in New York City, working full time and without a car, Jessica Ray and her husband have come to rely on deliveries of food and just about everything else for their home. It has meant more free time on weekends with their young son, rather than standing in line for toilet paper or dragging heavy bags of dog food back to their apartment.
Cheddar News checks in to see what to look out for on The Day Ahead as Campbell Soup and Vera Bradley are due to report earnings while economic data, including the April trade deficit and consumer credit, are slated to be released. And Wednesday is World Food Safety Day.
Financial services company Marqeta released its fourth annual state of payments report which reveals how widely Americans have adopted new technology like mobile banking and wallets. Marqeta CEO Simon Khalaf joined Cheddar News to discuss how common digital payments have become.
Katherine Rooney Vera, chief market strategist with StoneX, joined Cheddar News to discuss what investors should expect as the S&P closed near a nine-month high with volatility levels at their lowest level in over three years.
