Ozlo, the maker of comfortable, easy-to-use “sleepbuds” that drown out outside noise so you can get better rest, is turning its product into a platform.
The company’s plan began to take shape last month with the announcement of a partnership between Ozlo and meditation app Calm. But it kicked into high gear at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week as the company met with prospective partners to expand its reach.
Those new partners could help Ozlo tap into new audiences and build a revenue model beyond consumer-focused hardware and into the profit-margin-rich world of software subscriptions and healthcare. For instance, software features that use AI or are designed to provide relief to users with tinnitus could be offered as premium subscriptions. And a recent acquisition of a neurotech startup should help Ozlo expand beyond being a consumer product to entering the medical device market, too.
How Ozlo’s platform ambitions begin
Founded by former Bose employees, Ozlo always intended to build an ecosystem, Ozlo co-founder and CEO NB Patil explained on the sidelines of CES.
“The way we did that from the beginning is we built the iOS and Android SDK — so our first-party app actually runs on that SDK. That means whatever you see in our app can be made available to anybody,” Patil said.
The mental wellness company Calm, for instance, is using the SDK to tell whether its sleep and meditation content is actually resonating with its customers. While Calm can’t tell from its own app if customers have fallen asleep, Ozlo’s sensors can. The device detects how body movements and respiration rates change, and that data is sent to the Ozlo charging case. There, a machine learning algorithm determines whether someone is asleep or is relaxed.
Ozlo’s smart case has other sensors as well, including a temperature sensor and a light sensor that can add more data.
Now, that information can be shared with apps like Calm and others.
For example, if a user started playing a breathing exercise, Ozlo could tell if their respiration rate had gone down and share that data with its partner. If the exercise is unsuccessful, the partner would know they need to change the pattern or do something different.
“So there are two parts,” Patil notes. “Taking real-time action when the customer achieves the desired state [which Ozlo does with its feature that can shut off sounds after the user falls asleep] and the other part, which is very important, actually — that content creators are not quite thinking about — is, are they investing in the right content?”
Patil explains that content creators for these types of meditation and sleeping aid apps tend to invest in volume without measuring whether or not their content is effective.
“They don’t understand, actually, how it works in the field because there is no data,” he says.
This relationship could also add another revenue stream to Ozlo’s business beyond selling hardware. For instance, if a customer is prompted to upgrade their subscription to the partner’s product, Ozlo could take a portion of that transaction.
Patil told TechCrunch the company is already in discussions with other sleep and meditation apps, but this closed-loop feedback system could be used with any sort of content, including therapy or even audiobooks.
Ozlo is also working on tinnitus therapy tools to address the ear-ringing problem that affects 15% of its customer base. The company teamed up with Walter Reed Hospital last year to launch a clinical study of the problem and found that playing the right masking frequency overnight for many weeks can fool the brain into stopping the irritating signals producing the ringing sounds.
Patil says the tinnitus therapies will be available via a subscription and will roll out in the second quarter of 2026.
An AI to help you sleep better
Ozlo is also working to expand the insights it provides its own customers, and AI is an increasingly important piece. The company launched Sleep Patterns within its app in November to help customers understand how long and well they’ve slept, what their patterns are across the past weeks, and what factors could be disturbing their rest.
This year, Ozlo plans to introduce an AI agent that customers can text with and use as a “sleep buddy.” (The company revealed the “buddy” name for its AI agent in an Easter egg within the app. The app displays an animated character — “buddy” — that runs across the top of the screen when you open and close the case five times in a row.)
By integrating with other wearables and Apple’s HealthKit, Ozlo will be able to better understand a user’s patterns and what they need to sleep better. It also wants to be able to connect with IoT devices, like smart thermostats, to set the right sleeping temperature for users as soon as they open the case at night.
The AI features are expected in the second quarter.
New hardware, EEG insights on the way
Ozlo’s next-generation case will address the issue of the earbuds sometimes not being properly seated in the charger.
“We changed the contours inside the case — when you place [the sleepbud], it’s perfect. And then we’ll have a Bluetooth button to do the pairing,” Patil says.
Plus, the new device will include a redesigned antenna and extender for improved range, and will add an amplifier to boost how loud the headphones can be to drown out plane and train noise, when needed. This updated hardware will also arrive in Q2.
In terms of products, Ozlo will launch a bedside speaker in Q2 that will offer similar functionality to the Sleepbuds, but won’t need to go in the ear. A 4×6-inch speaker would also have its own sensor, allowing it to do things like tracking how many times you woke up for bathroom breaks, or alert others if you had fallen.
The speaker would allow the company to market to families with children under 13, as kids aren’t advised to wear earbuds at night. It could also make sense for elderly individuals who aren’t as technically savvy and don’t want to fiddle with in-ear devices.
Like the popular Hatch alarm clock, Ozlo is working on adding a light to a product in the future to gently wake you up. (The time frame to launch is still being determined.)
The acquisition play
Acquisitions are also part of Ozlo’s growth strategy.
The 60-person, Boston-based company just acquired Segotia, an EEG-focused neurotech firm from Ireland, that has been building “hearable” technologies. Ozlo believes this will allow it to bring brain-level insights to its consumer device and later develop tools to do real-time sleep intervention.
“Basically, we are custom designing the eartip that is going to measure the electrical signals from your ear. From that, actually, you can derive the delta signals from the brain, and you should be able to say what your brain is doing when it comes to sleep, or when it comes to awareness, and all that,” Patil explained.
A product incorporating the EEG technology will launch in 2027, allowing the company to move into the medical products field, as well.
With the busy year ahead, Ozlo will need to execute well on each new feature and product in rapid order to maintain its current pace and grow its customer base. It will also need additional capital. Patil told TechCrunch the company is in the process of closing a Series B round now, with more details to come in the month ahead.
