Will Ahmed

Founder & CEO WHOOP

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Will Ahmed built WHOOP out of a frustration he had as an athlete rather than as an engineer. Captaining Harvard’s men’s squash team, he could measure how hard he trained and could not measure anything about whether his body had recovered from it — so he read his way through dozens of medical papers and started building a wristband that would. The device that resulted deliberately has no screen, because the point is the data and not the glance. Ahmed sold it first to people for whom recovery is a profession, Michael Phelps and LeBron James among the earliest, and let consumer adoption follow the credibility that created. Fourteen years on, WHOOP raised $575m at a $10.1bn valuation in March 2026, runs at a $1.1bn bookings run rate, turned operating cash flow positive in 2025, and by Ahmed’s own account is heading for an IPO.

Career Highlights

• Founded WHOOP in 2012 while an undergraduate at Harvard; has been chief executive since inception. The first device shipped in 2015.
• Closed a $575m Series G on 31 March 2026 at a $10.1bn valuation, led by Collaborative Fund with the Qatar Investment Authority, Mubadala, Abbott, Mayo Clinic, IVP and others participating — nearly triple the $3.6bn valuation of 2021.
• Exited 2025 at a $1.1bn bookings run rate, up 103% year on year, and operating cash flow positive.
• Stated publicly after the Series G that he expects it to be the company’s last private round and that the next step is an initial public offering.
• Assembled an athlete investor base including Cristiano Ronaldo, Patrick Mahomes, Larry Fitzgerald and Eli Manning.
• Expanded into India from May 2024 on the back of adoption by the cricketers Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav and Shreyas Iyer.
• Appointed to the Board of Fellows of Harvard Medical School in 2023.
• Named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in Sports, 2026.

Professional Journey

Ahmed grew up an only child on Long Island, the son of an Egyptian immigrant who worked in financial services, and played almost everything — soccer, hockey, lacrosse, tennis, swimming, golf, sailing. He went to St Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, and then to Harvard, where he read government from 2008 to 2012 and captained the men’s squash team. His summers went the way most Harvard summers went at the time, with analyst stints at Allen & Company in 2010 and Lindsay Goldberg in 2011.

The company came out of the athletic half of that life rather than the financial half. As a competitive player he could see the asymmetry clearly: enormous attention paid to training load, almost none to whether the body had absorbed it. He read dozens of medical papers on physiological strain and recovery and began building wearable hardware in 2012, while still a student. It took three years to ship: the first WHOOP device launched in 2015.

The go-to-market was the strategic decision that mattered. Rather than competing for shelf space against consumer fitness trackers, Ahmed put the band on elite athletes — Michael Phelps and LeBron James early among them — and let the professional validation do the marketing. Athletes became investors as well as users, with Cristiano Ronaldo, Patrick Mahomes, Larry Fitzgerald and Eli Manning on the cap table. Consumer adoption followed, and with it institutional capital: a $1.2bn valuation in 2020 with IVP and SoftBank, then $3.6bn in 2021 after SoftBank put in $200m. In July 2023 the company moved its headquarters into Kenmore Square in Boston, with the mayor and the then US Labor Secretary at the ribbon-cutting.

March 2026 marked the inflection. WHOOP raised $575m in a Series G led by Collaborative Fund at a $10.1bn valuation — close to triple the 2021 mark — with a notably institutional and international register of co-investors: the Qatar Investment Authority, Mubadala, 2PointZero Group, Macquarie Capital, alongside strategic healthcare names in Abbott and Mayo Clinic. The financial picture underneath had changed to match. The company exited 2025 at a $1.1bn bookings run rate, having grown 103% year on year, and had turned operating cash flow positive. Ahmed told interviewers that he expected this to be the last private round WHOOP would raise, and that an IPO was next.

Alongside the company he was appointed to Harvard Medical School’s Board of Fellows in 2023, and in 2026 TIME named him to its list of the hundred most influential people in sports. He practises Transcendental Meditation daily, exercises at least five days a week, and plays enough golf to have appeared in the Waste Management Phoenix Open Pro-Am. He married the fashion designer Leily Amirsardary in 2018.

Education

Harvard University

A.B., Government, 2008-2012

St Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire

Secondary education