FORM has raised a $12 million Series A round led by large family offices in the UK and Denmark with participation from Silicon Valley Bank.
Vancouver’s FORM is the direct-to-consumer sports technology company behind the world’s first augmented reality swim goggles.
The investment comes after the successful launch of the FORM Smart Swim Goggles in 2019, which brought swimmers the unprecedented ability to see metrics like split times, distance, stroke rate, and calories displayed directly in their line of sight as they swim.
The funding will be used for further geographic expansion and localization efforts outside of North America, investments into new products and services, scaling e-commerce and product teams, as well as the expansion of field marketing and branding.
The global augmented reality market is expected to grow by 48.8% annually with consumer AR tech making up more than half of that market by 2025.
“FORM has grown rapidly since launch last August, and we’re proud that we shipped over 10,000 goggles from our website in just the first four months of operations,” said Dan Eisenhardt, Founder and CEO of FORM.
“There are over 240 million active pool swimmers worldwide, and yet the sport has been completely under-served by technology. With FORM, swimmers now have access to real-time data in a way that was previously unavailable to them. This investment will allow us to inject funds into the product, brand and sales expansion, giving even more swimmers seamless access to their performance metrics in real-time, and helping them fulfil their true potential.”
The FORM goggles are the first product to give swimmers real-time visual feedback, with metrics like split times, distance, stroke rate, pace per 100, and calories displayed directly in the swimmer’s line of sight. Through a partnership with Polar, swimmers also now have the ability to view their heart rate in real-time throughout their swim, enabling a level of training effectiveness and precision never experienced before.
Data from the FORM goggles then syncs with the companion FORM Swim App for iPhone and Android, where swimmers can customize metrics, review progress after each swim, analyse performance, engage with the community and their coaches, and track and share progress over time. Swimmers also have the option to sync data from the FORM Swim App with other platforms, including Strava, TrainingPeaks, Apple Health and Garmin.
FORM’s founder and CEO, Dan Eisenhardt, began his career as a sports technology entrepreneur in 2008 when he founded Recon Instruments. Recon launched the world’s first smart eyewear for sports in 2010 and was acquired by Intel Corporation in 2015.
FORM goggles are available at formswim.com and on Amazon in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia and Japan.