Home fitness startup Tonal has raised an additional $110 million in funding with the backing of all-star athletes Stephen Curry, Michelle Wie, Bobby Wagner, and Paul George.
The coronavirus shutdown has been a boon for connected fitness products, but Tonal is banking on its strength training offerings to help it stand apart from competitors.
While Peloton and Mirror have focused on replicating workouts that would usually take place in a studio setting, Tonal wants to recreate the experience of one-on-one instruction.
"We try to deliver an experience a lot like having a personal trainer, where everything is personalized to you," CEO and founder Aly Orady told Cheddar. "That's a really, really important part of strength training properly."
Tonal's main product is a home gym with a personal training platform built into it. The gym uses electro-magnetic weights to generate pressure, rather than large, clunky weight sets, which allows the system to be more compact and responsive to users' physical needs and goals.
"We're also the only intelligent fitness company on the market where our product experience is actually based on a lot of AI and personalization," Orady said.
Will gyms reopening cut into the home fitness market? Orady anticipates that many customers have already developed new habits that aren't likely to fade overnight.
"What we hear consistently throughout our communities and from our members is they're never going back," he said. "Once you've discovered the convenience of exercising at home, there's no point in spending the time driving to and from the gym."
Tonal is also testing its product in a health care setting. The company is partnering with the Mayo Clinic to use Tonal's strength training device to help patients with lower back pain.
"Strength training is foundational to physical therapy and rehab," he said. "Most [physical therapy] clinics have strength training equipment that they use in order to rehab patients. The Mayo Clinic study is to prove out the efficacy of Tonal in those clinical environments."
This latest funding round brings Tonal's total funds raised to date up to $200 million.
Updated Sept. 23 to clarify that the latest funding round brings Tonal's total raised to $200 million. A previous version of this story erroneously indicated the company's market value was $200 million.
About 780,000 pressure washers sold at retailers like Home Depot are being recalled across the U.S. and Canada, due to a projectile hazard that has resulted in fractures and other injuries among some consumers.
Europeans upset with Elon Musk still aren’t buying his electric cars, adding to a long losing streak for his company.
President Donald Trump has fired one of two Democratic members of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to break a 2-2 tie ahead of the board considering the largest railroad merger ever proposed.
Ford is recalling more than 355,000 of its pickup trucks across the U.S. because of an instrument panel display failure that’s resulted in critical information, like warning lights and vehicle speed, not showing up on the dashboard.
Nvidia reported a 56% increase in second-quarter revenue and a 59% rise in net income compared to a year ago.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is set to lead a protest march on Wall Street to urge corporate America to resist the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The New York civil rights leader will join clergy, labor and community leaders Thursday in a demonstration through Manhattan’s Financial District that’s timed with the anniversary of the Civil Rights-era March on Washington in 1963. Sharpton called DEI the “civil rights fight of our generation." He and other Black leaders have called for boycotting American retailers that scaled backed policies and programs aimed at bolstering diversity and reducing discrimination in their ranks.
President Donald Trump's administration last month awarded a $1.2 billion contract to build and operate what's expected to become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex to a tiny Virginia firm with no experience running correction facilities.
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos claims audiences don't want to watch Netflix movies in theaters, but that seems not to be the case recently.
Chipmaker Nvidia is poised to release a quarterly report that could provide a better sense of whether the stock market has been riding an overhyped artificial intelligence bubble or is being propelled by a technological boom that’s still gathering momentum.
Cracker Barrel said late Tuesday it’s returning to its old logo after critics — including President Donald Trump — protested the company’s plan to modernize.
