LVL raises $6.75 million in new funding for their hydration tracker
LVL Technologies announced today a $6.75 million Series A financing round led by the Samsung Catalyst Fund.
With participation from Maxim Integrated Products and other investors, LVL hopes to bring its hydration tracker to market by summer 2018. The company had previously raised $1.2 million on Kickstarter and a further $2.5 million in another Series A financing round back in 2013.
The wearable is the first of its kind. It uses red light technology to measure hydration levels and grab accurate heart rate readings. This technology penetrates 10 times deeper into your body than the green lights commonly found in fitness trackers.
“Water is such a critical part of who we all are,” said Dr. Dustin Freckleton, founder and CEO of LVL Technologies.
“Our bodies are made up mostly of water and yet our internal thirst drive does a surprisingly poor job of helping us stay properly hydrated. This is manifested in numerous ways, from headaches, to joint pain, impaired exercise performance, lowered mental clarity and so much more. All of these can be improved by better hydration habits.”
But the move is not without controversy. Many of LVL’s 7,500 Kickstarter backers were left fuming as the company had originally intended to deliver the wearable by this summer. While additional funding and support from Samsung adds credibility to the project, the one year long delay came as a shock to many. In fact, we received letters from some of them expressing their dismay.
But ultimately, this is the nature of the beast. There are no guarantees when it comes to crowdfunding, and many campaigns run into delays. It is a risky investment and you may not even get to see a finished product. With today’s press release, LVL has shared the news officially with the general press and public at large.
Samsung is confident the technology has huge potential. Lets hope they are right, and we see the launch of the first real-time hydration monitor in the near future.
“At Samsung, we’ve long believed that wearables will help usher in the next wave of innovation in digital health,” said Shankar Chandran, Managing Director and Head of the Samsung Catalyst Fund.
“By measuring important data on hydration – which has eluded the industry for years – LVL Technologies has demonstrated the vast potential of wearables technology, and the impact it can have on consumers’ lives.”
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They lied about everything in their Kickstarter campaign. They haven’t delivered the device, and have predicted another year before they have a working device.
Total fraud, they claimed to have a fully working prototype and people accordingly backed them on kickstarter. Now they ask people to wait another year because they scraped everything and are starting over. They only used kickstarter funds as a way to attract bigger investors. SHAME on them.
It’s a fraud company that used backers money from Kickstarter to sell the idea to Samsung. Shame. Don’t support this company.
Here another “nice” news from this company. They planned to discontinue the platform and support for their BSX insight next sommer (https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/01/insight-depth-review.html/comment-page-1#comment-2419024). This device was released just in November 2015. I bought ist last year for 500 $. It’s useless without their platform. Another indication that this company is fraud!
Hi Ivoaktive, it’s Alessandro from Humon.io here.
I didn’t see anything on rules regarding solicitation in the comments, so I hope me making this post is alright.
We would be happy to help any BSX users who are frustrated by the discontinuation switch to using the Humon Hex by giving them $100 OFF. See bit.ly/2iz0xfh .
the Hex is able to identify your lactate threshold and prescribes the perfect pace and workout intensities in real-time thanks to personalized, colored feedback. It has been clinically validated, works with iOS and Android devices via Bluetooth and connects to Garmin watch and Wahoo bike computers via ANT+. We’ll be shipping our first units in December!
Fraud. Did not deliver LVL, pulled back BSX.
At this point in time, it does indeed look like the LVL project used KS to fraudulently obtain funds. While backing any project on Kickstarter does come with a level of risk, that’s the nature of it, it is clear that BSX very blatantly flaunted the rules, fabricated much of their original proposition and went into it knowing all too well what they were doing.
There are now also questions that need to be asked of Kickstarter itself, especially seeing how they ‘released’ a project that broke a number of core rules upfront..
Scam! Fraud! Shame on you BSX!!! I really think that you are intentionally delaying your project!!
Those who own BSX is just liars. Don’t believe anything they said. Also I will never buy any more Samsung product since they stand there doing nothing.
“Gadgets & Wearables”? How about “Smoke & Mirrors” for this one? LVL has taken thousands of Kickstarter supporters for the ride of their life, making away with a small fortune in return for absolutely nothing. No actual product, and a timeline that’s turned out to be pure conjecture. “No guarantees when it comes to crowdfunding” — absolutely true, and we all knew & accepted that going in. But there’s a difference between a developer coming up short on delivering while trying, and the stunt that LVL pulled by continuing to claim all through the spring of ’17 that they were, “oh so close to shipping” — only to now own up to the fact that it’ll be AT LEAST a year before we see anything. Who knows what we’ll actually see by then, since it’s become quite clear that the “product” that they proudly claimed to only need $50K to finish off (they got closer to $1.5M in funding) doesn’t really exist in practice. No idea what they’ve actually spent our $1.5M on — clearly not development or production, otherwise they’d be delivering as promised.