Garmin’s Moxy acquisition points straight at Muscle Battery

Garmin has acquired Moxy Monitor, giving it direct access to the muscle-oxygen hardware and expertise that could eventually underpin its still-unannounced Muscle Battery feature.

The company has confirmed the purchase but offered almost nothing beyond that. The timing is difficult to ignore, though, because the company applied to trademark Muscle Battery earlier this year with a description built specifically around muscle oxygen saturation.

A very short confirmation

Garmin’s entire comment on the deal was that it could confirm the Moxy Monitor acquisition but had nothing further to share. There is no accompanying newsroom announcement, purchase price or explanation of what happens to Moxy’s products and customers.

That lack of detail is unusual, but the two companies hardly need an introduction. Moxy has worked with the Garmin ecosystem for more than a decade, adding ANT+ support in 2014 before becoming an early Connect IQ showcase and later gaining direct support through the ANT+ Muscle Oxygen profile.

Current Moxy sensors already work with compatible Garmin watches and Edge computers. Athletes can display muscle oxygen data during an activity and store it in the resulting FIT file alongside heart rate, power, pace and other workout metrics.

The acquisition therefore brings an existing partner inside Garmin rather than starting a relationship from scratch. Garmin gains the sensor technology, algorithms and practical knowledge behind a product that high-performance athletes, coaches and researchers already use.

The missing piece in Muscle Battery

Back in April, our original Muscle Battery report uncovered a Garmin trademark application covering software that captures, processes and analyses muscle oxygen saturation. The wording pointed towards a new performance metric, but it also left Garmin with an obvious hardware problem.

A normal smartwatch cannot produce useful muscle-specific SmO2 readings from the wrist alone. The sensor needs to sit over the target muscle, which is why Moxy users attach the unit to areas such as the quadriceps, calf or upper arm.

Moxy uses near-infrare light to measure changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin and myoglobin inside muscle tissue. The resulting SmO2 data can show how quickly a working muscle consumes oxygen, how well it recovers between intervals and when local fatigue starts becoming the limiting factor.

Garmin already had the software name and an unusually specific description of what it wanted to analyse. Buying Moxy potentially supplies the missing sensing hardware, along with years of calibration work and experience turning a complicated physiological signal into usable training data.

Do not expect this inside a watch

The obvious temptation is to imagine muscle oxygen becoming another reading collected by Garmin’s Elevate optical sensor. That is unlikely because SmO2 is local to the muscle underneath the sensor, rather than a whole-body measurement that works from any convenient spot on the wrist.

A separate accessory makes much more sense. Garmin could shrink the existing Moxy hardware into a smaller pod or strap, then connect it directly to watches, cycling computers and Garmin Connect without requiring users to assemble the current mix of data fields and analysis tools.

The company could also turn the raw percentage into something easier to understand. Muscle Battery suggests a consumer-facing score that tracks how ready a particular muscle group is for more work, rather than expecting athletes to interpret every rise and fall in SmO2 themselves.

What happens to Moxy now

Garmin has not explained whether Moxy will continue operating as a separate brand. It has also said nothing about the Moxy Portal, existing sensor sales, customer support or whether current owners should expect deeper integration with Garmin Connect.

There is no immediate reason for existing hardware to stop working. Moxy sensors already support ANT+, Bluetooth and internal recording, while their Garmin compatibility does not depend entirely on a proprietary cloud service.

The bigger question is what Garmin bought Moxy to build next. It could preserve the existing specialist business, develop a smaller Garmin-branded sensor or use Moxy’s technology and patents as the foundation for a broader muscle-recovery platform.

There is an obvious parallel with Whoop here. They have also explored muscle-oxygen sensing, and have acquired Humon muscle oxygen patents. So Whoop now owns technology and intellectual property from a company that had already put muscle oxygen sensing into a commercial sports wearable.