CARLSBAD – Despite a new name and a new round of investment funding, Sleep.AI’s goal of improving sleep health remains the same.
Formerly known as SleepScore Labs, Sleep.AI announced its rebrand last month in an effort to better describe its science, product and data platform as the company pivots from development to commercialization.
“We built up a very significant dataset, which is now more than 830 million hours of sleep data, but not just the sleep data, the environment data and behavior data and all of the things that affect sleep as well,” said founder and CEO Colin Lawlor.
“And really for the last two-to-three years, we’ve been building out the models that enable us to use that data to drive the highly personalized interventions for any given individual to help them to sleep better,” Lawlor added.
Sleep.AI uses sonar technology to collect sleep data from devices like phones and smartwatches. The company has used that data to create APIs that can be built into digital health and wellness platforms and ensure that users are getting the most accurate sleep data possible.
In building its underlying data infrastructure, Sleep.AI has compared its proprietary data as well as the “gold standard” of data from hospital sleep assessments to sleep data generated by different wearable devices.
The company then uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide insights about a user’s sleep data while comparing the data collected by a wearable device or other sleep tracking technology to Sleep.AI’s “gold standard” dataset.
“If you wear four different wearables tonight, you’re going to get four different answers about your sleep,” Lawlor said. “And so what that means is it’s really difficult to use the data, you feed that data into a (large language model) and it’s going to give you all sorts of answers, so the LLMs are unable to untangle what’s really happening with the data.”
Commercialization Plan Final Push to Profitability
To assist in commercializing its sleep health technology, Sleep.AI recently raised some $5.5 million from a group of investors led by Treasure Coast Ventures.
Sleep.AI already generates revenue and is “very, very close” to having positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The bulk of the funding will be to fuel the company’s go-to-market strategy, according to Lawlor, as well as to continue building new AI models for sleep health analysis.
“The key issue here is that we can process vast amounts of data in really short order today with the latest AI tools,” he said. “So we’re using AI to drive almost everything we do inside the company, not just as the product itself.”
Lawlor added that the company may seek one more funding round before the end of the year to continue fueling its growth.
Sleep.AI was originally founded in 2016 as SleepScore Labs, spun out from fellow San Diego-based sleep health technology company ResMed, which makes cloud-connected devices that help treat conditions like sleep apnea and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
According to Lawlor, the company then known as SleepScore Labs bought the Dutch company Sleep.AI, which made wearables and digital apps to track snoring and teeth grinding and clenching, in 2018 with the goal of using “vast amounts of data” to assist in sleep health, not simply because AI is a trendy field of technology.
The new Sleep.AI has spent the last seven years since that acquisition building out its models and data infrastructure, and can now look toward placing its sleep health APIs into as many health and wellness apps and other platforms as possible.
The company also plans to keep the SleepScore Labs moniker for its research and development and validation services.
“Once we had the data and the models and the randomized control trial and the extensive evidence behind everything, then we felt we were ready,” Lawlor said. “So we have owned Sleep.AI for seven years, but we didn’t have Sleep.AI truly built until now, so now is the time to share it.”
Sleep.AI
FOUNDED: 2016 as SleepScore Labs, rebranded 2025
CEO: Colin Lawlor
HEADQUARTERS: Carlsbad
BUSINESS: Sleep health technology
EMPLOYEES: About 35
FUNDRAISING: $5.5 million
WEBSITE: sleep.ai
CONTACT: sleepai@jmacpr.com
NOTABLE: SleepScore Labs originally spun out of fellow sleep health company ResMed