Chinese hardware startup Sleepace nabs $7M to help you get more beauty sleep

Chinese hardware startup Sleepace, maker of a gadget that monitors people’s sleep, revealed today that it has secured US$7 million in series B funding. The investment was led by retail chain Luolai Home Textile and followed by ecommerce titan JD.

Sleepace’s sole device right now is RestOn, which lies across the width of a bed in order to monitor a user’s sleep cycles, movements, respiratory rate, and heart rate. It costs RMB 1,099 (US$177), which makes it a pricey alternative to using a cheap fitness tracker wristband to analyze your sleep, but the startup reckons that its bit of kit is a more comfortable way to do it as the user doesn’t have to wear any gizmos while they try to sleep. As you’d expect, your quantified sleep data is presented in an accompanying app.

We tested Reston out last year and found that it works fairly well.

The Sleepace team first hit the market on Chinese crowdfunding site Demohour, then got just over US$3 million in series A funding last summer from Gobi Ventures. At the start of this year, Sleepace took the Reston to overseas consumers after wrapping up an Indiegogo campaign that soared past its goal.

Smart home kit

This is the latest in a series of moves that JD – Alibaba’s biggest rival in China – has made to partner with startups that make smart home or fitness gadgets, such as JD’s launch of a Kickstarter-style site. Last summer, JD joined Tencent in throwing funding at Picooc, which makes a set of smart scales.

As a part of JD’s financial backing of Sleepace, the startup will make use of JD’s smart home platform to make Reston work with the JD+ controller app for web-connected home devices. The backing of Luolai, meanwhile, will give the gadget a big visibility boost in the chain’s furniture stores.