REUTERS/Rick Wilking
Jawbone, the company that made fitness trackers and Bluetooth speakers, is liquidating its assets, according to a source familiar with its plans, marking the latest casualty in the once-promising wearable device market.
Jawbone founder and CEO Hosain Rahman has started a new company called Jawbone Health Hub, which will work on medical software and hardware. The company has raised money for the new venture, but it’s unclear how much, the source said.
Despite shuttering the business, Jawbone believes it is still worth a significant amount of money due to its pending litigation with rival Fitbit, according to the source.
Jawbone, which was once valued as high as $ 3 billion by private market investors, is the latest pioneer of wearable electronics to throw in the towel. Last year, Pebble the first maker of a smartwatch sold its assets to Fitbit in a fire sale. As for Fitbit, its stock is trading at 52-week lows.
The Information was the first to report the news of Jawbone’s liquidation. A Jawbone spokesperson declined to comment.
Jawbone stopped producing its fitness trackers last year, according to sources familiar with the company. It no longer sold them as of September 2016. Jawbone sold its remaining inventory to a third-party reseller at a reduced price in order to generate much-needed revenue, sources said. The company also had trouble paying some vendors for their services and was forced to cut ties with its external customer service agency, sources said.
Jawbone was in the process of making a shift to making “clinical-grade” wearable devices that could measure vitals like blood pressure, but the company was having trouble getting the device to work properly, sources told Business Insider. It’s unclear if Jawbone Health Hub will continue work on the device. Jawbone Health Hub will service current Jawbone fitness trackers. Jawbone was last valued at $ 1.5 billion when it raised $ 165 million in a down round in January 2016, according to Recode’s Kara Swisher. Its previous valuation was about $ 3 billion, and it raised a total of about $ 1 billion over the years.
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