TuringSense, a pioneer in intelligent wearables technology, announced today that it has closed a $3.0M pre-Series A round of funding, bringing the company's total investment to-date to $6.0 million. The funding was led by venture capital firm Ideosource, which also invested in the previous seed round, with participation by new investors The Core Group and Fenox Venture Capital. TuringSense will leverage the funds to aggressively expand its mass market offerings for its innovative PIVOT line of intelligent wearable products.
What are Intelligent Wearables? -- Or, Why Smart Watches aren't Smart
According to numerous industry observers, the $14B global market for wearable technology has plateaued, due mainly to the fact that current wearables are simply of limited value to consumers. These wearables are either data-reporting devices or extra ways to control a smartphone -- neither of which offers particularly large benefits. The basic distinction in today's wearables market, between "basic" wearables that don't support third-party apps, and "smart" wearables that do, is in the end a distinction without a difference.
By contrast, TuringSense is pioneering wearables endowed with artificial intelligence. These wearables, which are being developed under the PIVOT brand, will be able to track the full range of a consumer's body movement -- for example, a tennis or golf swing -- but also make live recommendations to improve performance. And, they will go so far as to teach a consumer entirely new skills, in a real-time, personalized way.
"The wearables market could learn a lesson from GPS," said Joe Chamdani, CEO & co-founder of TuringSense. "What made GPS take off with consumers wasn't that it could accurately report your location's latitude and longitude. What made GPS take off was the introduction of turn-by-turn driving directions. Intelligent wearables can do something similar: instead of just reporting data, we can precisely guide consumers, step by step and movement by movement, toward their goals."
Notable Milestones
With this round of funding, TuringSense is also announcing significant progress against these key milestones:
PIVOT Tennis on Track for Q3 Launch. PIVOT Tennis, TuringSense's first consumer offering now in the hands of pilot customers, is expected to be available for general sale in Q3. PIVOT Tennis uses biomechanics, sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) to allow tennis players of any ability to perfect their strokes or learn new ones.

PIVOT Connect on Track for Q2 Launch. TuringSense has developed a technology platform for partners who want to build their own applications on top of PIVOT technology. It will be commercially available in Q2.

SSC Partnership on Track for Q2 Launch. TuringSense's partnership with Europe's leading Orthopedic Hospital, Ireland-based Sports Surgery Clinic (SSC), will allow SSC to extend their return-to-play and performance testing capabilities to any sports team, without requiring players to visit SSC's motion capture and analysis facility in Dublin. SSC already counts elite soccer and rugby teams as clients.

BYD Manufacturing Partnership Operational. TuringSense has partnered with BYD, the global $15B electronics (and auto) manufacturer based in Shenzhen, China, to manufacture its hardware, and production has already begun. BYD was recently rated by BusinessWeek as the 8th most innovative company in the world.

Key Hires. TuringSense recently added top design and marketing staff with backgrounds at Fitbit, Zepp, and Yahoo!, adding to its already deep bench in engineering.

TuringSense's PIVOT: Patent-Pending Technology
TuringSense's patent-pending PIVOT technology is built from the ground up around both capture of 3D biomechanical data of a user's movement and creation of a "motion library" of reference motions describing optimal movement. The company's key intellectual property includes:
improving latency and reliability of wireless transfer of body position data
reducing the bandwidth usage, power consumption, and cost of data transfer
kinematic modeling to minimize the number of sensors required
support for multiple reference motions per activity
scalable cloud framework to support millions of users in real time

"Having the financial and strategic support of these sophisticated investors both validates the market opportunity and fuels our momentum as TuringSense expands into the mass market," said Chamdani. "And since PIVOT is configurable, a consumer can use the same wearable for virtually any type of activity or sport."
"At Ideosource, we pride ourselves on being long-term partners for investee companies and are thrilled to support TuringSense through an accelerated growth period," said Andi Boediman, managing partner at Ideosource. "TuringSense's revolutionary PIVOT technology -- which incorporates sensors with highly accurate 3D biomechanics and a platform to accommodate multiple applications -- has the potential to transform the wearables market. They are quickly expanding their footprint and building a compelling business."
"Fenox is proud to support TuringSense in bringing real value-add to the wearables market. We will use our global network to help TuringSense grow the company across the world," said Anis Uzzaman, CEO and general partner at Fenox Venture Capital.
About TuringSense
TuringSense, a pioneer in intelligent wearables technology, is revolutionizing instruction for all kinds of human movement activities, from fitness to gaming, sports and physical therapy. The company's line of PIVOT-branded consumer products uses patent-pending technology to enable consumers to learn and practice skills optimally. PIVOT Tennis, its first consumer product, is due in Q3 2017 and available in pilot form today. TuringSense is venture-backed and based in Santa Clara, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley USA. For more information, visit www.turingsense.com.