Hello, the maker of sleep tracker Sense, is shutting down, and Fitness company Fitbit and startup Casper have been reached for participating in Hello’s possible buyout, according to media reports.
Hello, the maker of sleep tracker Sense, is shutting down, and Fitness company Fitbit and startup Casper have been reached for participating in Hello’s possible buyout, according to media reports.
The news was first reported by Axios, which said that Hello is laying off most of its employees and is looking for a buyer. Soon afterwords, James Proud, CEO of Hello, published a blog post on Medium saying that the company is shutting down.
“It’s with a heavy heart that I share with you the news that Hello will soon be shutting down. The past few weeks we have been working hard to find the right home for Sense and we are still focused on that. There will be lots of questions to which I don’t currently have the answers. As soon as I know, I will update everyone,” Proud wrote.
Proud also said that he will try hard to keep the service working, but everything is still not sure yet.
Sense is a baseball-sized device with a sensor sitting in the pillow that detects and records users’ sleeping pattern. While sleep tracking has been a standard feature of health and fitness devices, Sense also integrates environmental elements that help build an optimal sleeping environment. For example, it integrates smart home controls that will trigger other gadgets when users wake up in the morning.
Hello has raised over US$40 million in venture capital. Its investors include former Google executive Hugo Barra, Facebook executive and former PayPal president David Marcus and former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. Its first product successfully raised US$2.4 million on Kickstarter and the company was valued between US$250 million and US$300 million in 2015.
According to the CEO, customers who bought Sense directly from Hello’s website will not get a refund after the shutdown, while those who purchased from third-party channels will get compensated per the return policy of individual retailers.