Dumbbells …. not so dumb anymore! Why we invested in Kabata Fitness, “the world’s first AI-Powered Dumbbells”?

Strength and resistance training, dating from Ancient Greek times, today we know that it has a lot of benefits. According to various research papers, one of the benefits is that 30–60 minutes of strength training per week reduces all-cause mortally by 10–17%. Strength training is also beneficial to build better physical functioning, examples include: maintenance of healthy body weight and improvement of cardiovascular risk factors such as blood pressure.

We also know that people are looking for more hyper-personalised training which ultimately increases accountability, education and lower intimidation.

Connected fitness equipment is disrupting the traditional ways of training at home and Kabata is making your strength sessions even smarter.

Kabata is building the world’s first AI-powered dumbbells with many features which will help and encourage you to train your muscle groups in the best and most fun way possible. The dumbbells will have advanced metrics like motion tracking, automatic rep counting with integrated accelerometers, real time form correction and AI-powered coaching. Not forgetting to also mention that it’s very easy and quick to change the weights with an intuitive knob on the platform.

Behind Kabata’s inception are Kareem and Brian who were childhood friends who reunited during covid and decided to start the company.

It’s hard to believe that dumbbells never really evolved and didn’t get the attention that they deserve being the 2nd most popular piece of gym equipment behind a workout bench. In ancient time, athletes would use an “haltere” made from stone or metal with a similar shape albeit typically with a U-shaped, designed to fit in the palm of the hand which differ from the ones today. Fast forward to today, most of the dumbbells we use are looking the same.

We have seen the growth of connected fitness equipment with tech embedded in bikes, treads, rowers and even smart mirrors, geared more towards cardio and HIIT types of training but nothing really towards strength training.

In a rising, falling and finally recalibrating industry we see connected fitness equipment a growing category in the fitness industry. We expect training at home will take a bigger part in the users fitness journey and we believe that Kabata is in the best place to win the race for smart dumbbells!

The $5M funding round was led by Menlo Ventures, alongside Courtside Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners, Wildcard Ventures, AIR Ventures, MVP ventures, Alumni Ventures and former NBA player Zaza. We are proud to be an investor in Kabata!