A look at the rise of smart home fitness equipment startups, such as Mirror, which recently raised $25M, and Tonal, which makes a weight-lifting machine
Erin Griffith / New York Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
Erin Griffith's Times piece lands mid-arc for both companies: Mirror had just closed a $13M round led by Spark Capital seven months earlier for its mirror-like streaming device, and this $25M raise sets up the $34M round led by Point72 with Lululemon and Karlie Kloss a year later. Tonal, the other startup profiled, was still pre-Series C at the time.
What makes the story worth revisiting is how the arc resolved: Tonal rode pandemic demand to a $250M Series E at a $1.6B valuation after sales rose 800% from Dec. 2019 to Dec. 2020, then took a $130M raise at a reported $550M-$600M valuation in 2023 — a full boom-and-correction cycle contained within the corpus.
First-order effects
- Mirror converts the fresh $25M into product and content scale, following the playbook it already showed by adding $40-per-30-minute 1:1 personal training on top of live and on-demand classes — hardware revenue now paired with recurring service fees.
Second-order effects
- Tonal answers with successive raises — a $45M Series C for its $2,995 machine-learning strength system, then the $250M Series E — forcing both startups to compete on coaching subscriptions and price points rather than device novelty alone.
- Lululemon's participation in Mirror's $34M round signals apparel brands buying distribution into the connected-fitness channel rather than building devices themselves.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, connected fitness consolidates around the correction: Tonal's fall from $1.6B to roughly $550M-$600M suggests the category's economics depend on sustained home-workout demand, pushing survivors toward brand partnerships, services attach, and disciplined burn instead of growth-at-all-costs fundraising.
The trend: Connected home fitness is cycling from venture-funded hardware boom to valuation correction, with subscription services and strategic brand investors deciding which platforms survive.