Whoop is pushing deeper into the Gulf's longevity economy.
The Boston-based human performance company this week announced a clinical research partnership with Abu Dhabi's Department of Health. The deal builds on a $75 million anchor investment from Mubadala Investment Company and a broader buildout that has made the GCC one of Whoop's fastest-growing markets.
“This region has become one of the most important regions for Whoop,” its founder and chief executive Will Ahmed tells On the Record with Hadley Gamble. “We're growing extraordinarily fast here in the GCC. We're up about 15 times in the last three years. Our membership base here has grown over 85 per cent just in the past year.”
The company has separately put GCC year-on-year growth at more than 75 per cent.
Speaking on stage at the Abu Dhabi Future Health Summit, Mr Ahmed said the Department of Health agreement would fund “powerful clinical research to drive health outcomes” around prevention, sleep, cardiovascular health and ageing.
The announcement is the latest layer in a multiyear capital and operational push by Abu Dhabi entities into Whoop, which produces wearable health trackers. On May 7, Whoop and Mubadala said they had formed a strategic partnership “to advance proactive health, performance science and preventative healthcare innovation in the UAE”, anchored by the $75 million investment.
That investment was made as part of Whoop's $575 million Series G, which valued the company at $10.1 billion. The round was led by Collaborative Fund and, according to the company, included Mubadala and Abu Dhabi-based 2PointZero Group.
Under terms disclosed by both sides, Whoop would establish a dedicated office in Abu Dhabi, expand its Advanced Labs blood-testing product, introduce full Arabic localisation across its platform – launched this month with a GCC-wide campaign – and launch the Whoop-Mubadala Health Research Initiative, a longitudinal research programme aimed at strengthening the UAE's health value chain from diagnostics and genomics to prevention and behavioural optimisation.
Mr Ahmed has cast the UAE capital as a proving ground for a shift from reactive to predictive care.
“The power of continuous health monitoring is that it can really understand signals in your body that you may not be able to feel,” he says. “We believe those insights can actually drive health outcomes, which is to say it can make you lower your weight, it can make you decrease your blood pressure.”
He says the company's thesis since its launch 14 years ago – to validate continuous monitoring with elite athletes and then move into the mainstream – is now playing out in the Gulf. He acknowledges the timing, closing a large Gulf investment shortly after the Iran war began, reflects a long-term commitment.
“The timing of some of that partnership was complicated with the wars in this region. But to me, it was obvious to show up because I'd been showing up for the last decade,” he says.
For Abu Dhabi, the Whoop partnership is one piece of a broader longevity infrastructure play. An EY survey cited by Abu Dhabi officials found only 43 per cent of respondents follow a structured fitness plan, even as 61 per cent had used a wearable in the past year and 87 per cent reported a positive experience using AI for health decisions – a gap officials believe wearables plus clinical integration can close.
Whoop, which has now raised about $1 billion in total capital, said the Gulf expansion would be paired with retail distribution, sponsorships with the UAE Team Emirates-XRG cyclists and Al Nassr football team, and, through Whoop Qatar, its first performance research and developement lab outside Boston, later in 2026.
“There are many countries in the world that are excited about wearable technology,” Mr Ahmed says. “When you can remove bureaucracy and you can say, look, no, we want health care not to be reactive but actually proactive, then a lot of things fall in suit.”