Profile of Quanttus, a failed startup borne out of research to measure blood pressure with a watch, whose alumns now populate health teams at big tech companies
- In 2012, a group of MIT researchers came up with an idea to measure blood pressure around the clock with a wristwatch. Tweets: @chrissyfarr and @mdmajmudar Tweets: Christina Farr / @chrissyfarr : I wrote my first big feature for @CNBC on a health-tech startup that failed. Why? It was ahead of its time, working on a biomedical “holy grail”, and its alums went on to join the health teams at Apple, Microsoft, Amazon & many more. http://www.cnbc.com/... #longreads Maulik Majmudar / @mdmajmudar : Proud of the team and loved every minute of it; even though it didn't work. Alumns from this failed health tech start-up now hold key roles at Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and others http://www.cnbc.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Quanttus fits a recurring arc in consumer health hardware: an ambitious MIT spinout chasing a biomedical 'holy grail' — around-the-clock wrist-based blood pressure — burns out, and its real output turns out to be people. The closest precedent in this coverage is Doppler Labs' in-ear computer, which also died but seeded similar work at Amazon, Apple, and Google.
The destination matters as much as the departure. With Apple building a health OS positioned as a chokepoint for providers and device makers, experienced biosensing talent migrating in-house gives the platforms exactly the expertise they need to absorb functions startups once tried to sell standalone.
First-order effects
- Quanttus alumni now sit on the health teams at Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet, carrying watch-based blood pressure research directly into the companies best positioned to fund long-horizon biosensing R&D.
Second-order effects
- Standalone wearable startups lose their strongest recruiting argument against the platforms — Jawbone's post-liquidation pivot to a device-agnostic health tracking service shows the same retreat from proprietary hardware toward software and services.
Third-order effects
- If the Doppler Labs and Quanttus pattern holds, continuous physiological monitoring consolidates inside platform companies with distribution, while independents like Q Bio survive by selling subscription services ($3,495/year) rather than competing on devices.
The trend: Failed wearable-health startups are functioning as de facto R&D labs for big tech, with alumni migration — not acquired products — transferring the technology into platform health teams.