Managing high blood pressure has long relied on outdated tools and sporadic check-ins. But one healthtech startup is changing the game with an approach that blends machine learning, medical-grade accuracy, and consumer convenience. Meet Hilo — formerly known as Aktiia — a blood pressure intelligence company on a mission to make hypertension management smarter, continuous, and effortless.
Backed by a fresh $42 million Series B round, Hilo is poised to scale its clinically validated, cuffless blood pressure monitoring platform. The funding was co-led by Earlybird Health and Wellington Partners, joined by Kfund, naturalX Health Ventures, and existing supporters including Khosla Ventures, redalpine, Molten Ventures, and others. This latest injection of capital pushes Hilo’s total funding beyond $100 million.
Unlike traditional blood pressure monitors that depend on bulky cuffs and occasional readings, Hilo offers an always-on wearable that passively collects data every 90 minutes — even during sleep. Combined with an intuitive mobile app, this continuous stream of insights helps users and healthcare providers detect, understand, and act on hypertension trends with greater accuracy and speed.
AI at the Core of Hypertension Intelligence
At the heart of Hilo’s innovation is a foundation machine learning model purpose-built for blood pressure management. Trained on tens of billions of optical signals and refined through hundreds of millions of calibration data points, this model enables medical-grade insights without the hassle of cuffs or user-triggered readings. Already deployed across more than 120,000 users, the model powers Hilo’s category-defining cuffless blood pressure monitoring (CBPM) technology.
Hilo’s CEO, Raghav “Rags” Gupta, emphasized that this funding is more than just capital—it’s a vote of confidence in the urgent need for smarter, more frequent blood pressure monitoring solutions. With over a billion people affected by hypertension globally and only 1 in 5 effectively managing it, the stakes are sky-high.
From Research Roots to Global Ambition
Hilo’s journey began in Switzerland in 2018, when founders Raghav Gupta, Dr. Mattia Bertschi, and Dr. Josep Solà brought together deep expertise in biomedical engineering and signal processing from their work at Swiss research center CSEM. Frustrated by the limitations of conventional monitoring tools, they set out to build a platform that could provide round-the-clock, non-invasive blood pressure insights.
The result? A CE-marked wearable device supported by a rich dataset and trusted by researchers, clinicians, and patients across multiple countries. Their work has led to more than 120 peer-reviewed publications and over 35 patents, setting the foundation for a new standard in cardiovascular health tracking.
What Makes Hilo Different
Where many devices rely on inflatable cuffs or require user prompts, Hilo’s solution is fully automated. Its wearable monitors blood pressure every 90 minutes—day and night—without interrupting the user. This not only removes human error and measurement anxiety but also captures critical nighttime readings often missed by traditional tools.
In a field populated by major players like Omron, Samsung, and Huawei—whose products require manual calibration—Hilo stands out with its continuous, hands-free approach. Competitors like Withings, A&D Medical, and Valencell also pursue wearable solutions, but few offer the seamless, clinically validated experience that Hilo delivers.
This funding round will help Hilo expand into new markets and scale its blood pressure intelligence platform for both consumers and enterprise healthcare systems. The rebrand from Aktiia to Hilo signals a broader global ambition: to make effortless and accurate blood pressure monitoring available to everyone, everywhere.
Building a Healthier Future with Real-Time Insight
The implications of Hilo’s technology go beyond individual wellness. By turning passive biometric data into actionable insights, the platform has the potential to reshape how entire populations approach hypertension—one of the leading risk factors for death worldwide.
Earlybird Health’s Christoph Massner, who joins Hilo’s board, summed it up: Hilo merges clinical-grade precision with consumer-friendly design. It empowers people to take control of their health with minimal effort—a critical shift in an era where preventative care is more important than ever.
For Wellington Partners’ Johannes Fischer, the opportunity is equally clear: real-time, continuous access to blood pressure data will change how we monitor and manage one of the most pervasive risks to human health.
With a growing dataset, robust privacy standards, and an AI-first mindset, Hilo is setting a new benchmark for how we detect, track, and treat hypertension. And with $42 million in fresh backing, it’s only just getting started.
