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.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
