Intel buying health-tracking wristwatch maker Basis for around $100M
Basis Goes To Intel For Around $100M — With $96.7M In Funding, Powa Technologies Debuts PowaTag For Mobile And Audio-Triggered Commerce — Intel has won the Basis auction, we're hearing, at a price of around $100 million according to one source.
Context & Ripple Effects
Basis Science spent February at the center of an auction that had Apple and Google both said to be in acquisition talks with the health-tracking watch maker — and today's reporting has Intel winning it at around $100 million. The price lands barely above the $96.7M Basis had raised, making this closer to a capital-return exit than the breakout sale its suitors' names implied.
It is also the second nine-figure health-wearable deal inside a year, following Jawbone's purchase of BodyMedia for more than $100 million in April 2013, which together put a floor under what consumer-health hardware companies are worth to strategic buyers. The pickup across BetaKit, Computerworld, EE Times, eWeek and others shows how closely the market treats any signal about where Intel goes next.
First-order effects
- Basis's investors get an exit at roughly the $96.7M they put in, while Intel — reportedly outbidding Apple and Google — gains an operating health-tracking device line and the biometric data platform behind it.
- The deal removes the most credible independent health-band maker from the startup pool, leaving Jawbone and remaining independents to face consumers without a neutral rival.
Second-order effects
- A silicon vendor owning a wrist-worn device puts pressure on Intel's own customers — consumer electronics makers who build on Intel chips — to wonder whether their supplier is now a competitor in end products.
- With two ~$100M-plus health-hardware exits on record (Jawbone–BodyMedia in 2013, Intel–Basis now), founders and backers of similar bands gain a valuation anchor, likely firming ask prices in upcoming fundraising rounds.
Third-order effects
- If chipmakers keep buying their way into finished devices, the industry drifts further toward vertically integrated post-PC players, blurring the supplier/product-company line that defined the PC era.
- Consumer health tracking consolidating around large strategics rather than standalone startups points to a wearables market structured like semiconductors itself: a few deep-pocketed platforms, thin independent field.
The trend: Wearable computing is consolidating into big strategic acquirers — with chipmakers like Intel joining consumer brands in paying nine figures for health-data hardware plays.