Is everybody going to sleep in a cooling bed?

Will you eventually be sleeping in a bed that either warms or cools you depending on the room's temperature and your vitals? Probably. It's a great idea to help people sleep better and keep track of some important health metrics.

Right now, these products are expensive and in early stages of development. In time, I suspect they'll become much more affordable and mainstream.

I'm not quite ready to become an early adopter, however.

https://www.eightsleep.com/pod-cover/

Musk and Zuckerberg Praise This $3,000 Smart Mattress Cover. Will Regular People Buy, Too?

High-tech bedding company Eight Sleep has raised $100 million to expand into retail and the medical sector, in the hopes of expanding its customer base beyond tech executives

By Katie Deighton, WSJ

Aug. 19, 2025 7:00 am ET

Eight Sleep, a “sleep fitness” startup, raised $100 million in Series D funding to expand into retail and medical devices.

When your product’s power users include tech billionaires such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, where do you go next? For “sleep fitness” startup Eight Sleep, the answer is Main Street.

The 11-year-old startup on Tuesday said it had raised $100 million in a Series D funding round, partly to expand into physical retail and medical devices that could be covered by insurance. It’s also widening its marketing to feature real customers outside of tech, betting that a growing interest in health and longevity will drive more consumers to spend big on their nightly snooze.

The funding round brings Eight Sleep’s valuation to close to $1 billion, up from nearly $500 million in 2021, according to the company.

“Our audience is still someone who’s spending $3,000 on a high-tech device to help them sleep better, but they are normal people—they are doctors and they are dancers and they are teachers,” said Eight Sleep’s co-founder and vice president of brand and marketing, Alexandra Zatarain. “We will keep developing innovations that will get us into more households.”

The company’s core Pod comprises a mattress cover connected to a router-shaped “hub” that provides cooling and heating, sleep and health data tracking, and vibrating and thermal alarms. The latest model costs up to $5,099 for a king-size cover with features including speakers and adjustable height, not counting an annual app subscription that’s required for the first year and tops out at $399. Optional accessories include a $1,000 blanket.

Rival smart bedding brands such as Chilipad by Sleepme cost less and don’t require a subscription.

But Eight Sleep last year unveiled a sleep supplement at $59 a month and plans to introduce more products at lower price points, Zatarain said.

Its marketing has begun to feature actual customers from a range of professions, lifestyles and backgrounds. It is also working more with health-focused influencers to promote its products in social media. And this year it began to advertise on television to reach a wider audience.

Investors in the new funding round include HSG, the venture-capital and private-equity firm formerly known as Sequoia Capital China; Valor Equity Partners, the investment firm run by Musk confidant Antonio Gracias; Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s venture-capital fund; startup accelerator and venture-capital firm Y Combinator; and the Formula One driver Charles Leclerc.

Eight Sleep will use some of the funds to develop an AI agent designed to interpret users’ biometric data and make temperature, elevation, sound and other environmental tweaks while users are sleeping, then offer health and lifestyle recommendations when they wake.

The money will also go toward funding Eight Sleep’s expansion into China and its push to make the Pod a medically prescribable treatment that would be reimbursable by health insurance. The company hopes its products will be used to treat sleep apnea, and last month introduced a rapid cool-down feature to help customers counter hot flashes during menopause. The company says it is in the process of applying for approval from the Food and Drug Administration as a medical device.

Eight Sleep has turned in profitable quarters for most of the past two years, according to Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Matteo Franceschetti, who is married to Zatarain.

The company declined to disclose revenue, but said sales of the Pod have generated more than $500 million since it was introduced in 2019.

Eight Sleep has always sold its products directly to consumers online, but in the next year plans to set up its own retail showrooms in markets where brand awareness is already high, Zatarain said.

“We find in our marketing/purchasing journey that people would like to try the product,” she said. “We could probably be accelerating our sales even more if we have a way for people to try it.”