Bloomlife gets $4M for wearable pregnancy tracker

San Francisco-based Bloomlife has raised $4 million for its smartphone-connected pregnancy-tracking wearable, bringing the startup’s total funding to $6 million. The round was led by Marc Benioff and Efficient Capacity, with additional contributions from LanzaTech Ventures, The Chernin Group, Kapor Capital, and Act One Ventures.

Bloomlife’s first product is a direct-to-consumer offering for women in the third trimester of a pregnancy. The sensor, worn on a woman’s belly and affixed via an adhesive patch, detects contractions and displays statistics on a companion app about their duration and frequency. But future generations of the device will include much more information, including some functionality that will require FDA clearance, CEO Eric Dy told MobiHealthNews.

“We have a [clinically validated] wearable sensor that tracks various physiological parameters of the mom and the baby throughout pregnancy, the first feature of which we’re commercializing around contractions,” he said. “But the sensor tracks a lot more than that. We can monitor fetal movement, fetal heart rate, various aspects of maternal health, all through the same sensors, essentially upgrading software and algorithms.”