Clair Health is developing a wrist wearable that gives women continuous, real-time insights into their hormones without blood draws, urine tests, or needles. The device integrates 10 biosensors and more than 100 proprietary biomarkers and is designed around female physiology, with personalized models that adapt to an individual woman’s patterns rather than assuming a standard menstrual cycle. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Clair Health Co-Founders Jenny Duan (CEO) and Abhinav Agarwal (CTO) to learn more about the company’s origins, sensing technology, continuous hormone monitoring, and vision for women’s health.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit):Could you tell me more about your background?
Clair Health (Jenny):My path to founding Clair Health started in high school when I volunteered at Rose Haven, a nonprofit in Oregon supporting women and children experiencing domestic violence and homelessness, where I repeatedly watched women get dismissed by healthcare providers because there was no quantitative data to back up their symptoms
That experience stayed with me when I went to Stanford University, where I leaned into women’s health, startups, and investing. When I met my co-founder Abhinav, I recognized that hormone health was a critical missing layer in healthcare and that the technology had finally reached a point where continuous tracking could become a reality
Clair Health (Abhinav):As Co-Founder and CTO of Clair Health, I bring expertise in wearables and health technology, previously CTO of the world’s first wearable continuous glucose monitor. That experience gave me a deep foundation in noninvasive sensing, sensor fusion, and what clinical validation requires
We both recognized the same gap in the wearables space: that wearables had been collecting enormous amounts of data for years, but nobody had built the algorithms to read hormonal patterns from those signals. We had the idea to take what I’d learned about noninvasive sensing and sensor fusion and point it at one of the most underleveraged opportunities in healthcare, which was giving women real-time insight into their own hormones so they could fully understand their health.
As Co-Founder and CTO of Clair Health, I lead our hardware, sensing, and AI work. Earlier in my career, I served as CTO of the company behind the world’s first wearable continuous glucose monitor, so I’ve spent a considerable amount of time working on wearable health technology that has to earn clinical trust
But Clair’s technology is something we built from a blank sheet of paper. When Jenny and I dug into women’s health, what struck me was how little the wearable industry had actually built for women: the devices on the market were never designed around female physiology, and they didn’t have the sensors needed to understand hormonal health
So we developed new sensor hardware, new biomarkers, and new models, all purpose-built around women’s biology. Giving women real-time insight into their own hormones is the most meaningful engineering problem I’ve ever worked on
Pulse 2.0 (Amit):How did the idea for the company come together?
Clair Health (Abhinav):When Jenny and I met at Stanford, we immediately bonded over a shared frustration with the state of women’s health technology. We both recognized the same gap in wearables. They had been collecting the right data for years, heart rate, temperature, HRV, but nobody had built the algorithms to read hormonal patterns from those signals
That shared recognition was the spark that became Clair Health. Personally, my work on a continuous glucose monitor provided insight into the impacts of continuously tracking a health metric. A continuous stream of data provides a much larger picture of someone’s health
When Jenny and I met at Stanford, we immediately bonded over a shared frustration: healthcare has a massive blind spot around women’s hormones
Hormones shape everything from fertility and sleep to mood, energy, and long-term health, yet the only way for a woman to see them was a snapshot in time, a blood draw or a urine strip on a single day
And when we looked at the wearables women were already wearing, we realized none of them were built for this. They weren’t designed around female physiology, and they didn’t carry the sensors needed to read hormonal patterns
That realization was the spark that became Clair Health: if the right device didn’t exist, we would build it ourselves – new sensors, new hardware, and new algorithms, designed entirely around women’s bodies
Clair Health (Jenny):The idea grew out of conversations Abhinav and I were having about the gaps in the healthcare system, particularly around women’s health
I had spent years witnessing women’s symptoms being dismissed because there was no measurable data to substantiate what they were experiencing
I knew that women with conditions like PCOS and endometriosis wait an average of seven years for a diagnosis, and that nearly 70% of women with PCOS remain undiagnosed entirely
Women have been living without the data to back up their own experiences for far too long, and we knew we had the power to change that
Pulse 2.0 (Amit):What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far?
Clair Health (Jenny & Abhinav):The night we held the finished Clair device in our hands for the first time
Our entire team had poured months into that device, and the first finished units were scheduled to arrive from our manufacturer the day before a major investor demo. Then DHL missed the delivery
So the two of us jumped in a car that night and went after the package ourselves, chasing the truck all the way back to the DHL depot
Standing in that parking lot, opening the box, and finally holding Clair, months of our whole team’s work suddenly felt real in a way no slide deck ever could
The demo went off without a hitch the next morning, but that night at the depot is the memory we keep coming back to
Pulse 2.0 (Amit):What are the company’s core products and features?
Clair Health (Jenny):Clair is a wrist wearable that gives women real-time, continuous insights into their hormones without blood draws, urine tests, or needles
It monitors estrogen, progesterone, LH, and FSH in real time, and pairs that data with personalized insights so women can understand what their hormones are doing and how they affect all aspects of their daily lives, from fertility and sleep to energy, mood, and metabolic health
Women can also use our “Ask Clair” feature to ask questions about their hormone health and receive personalized answers
Clair Health (Abhinav):On the technical side, Clair integrates 10 biosensors and over 100 proprietary biomarkers
Existing wearables were never built to capture these signals, so we engineered our sensor stack specifically around female physiology
Inputs include optical heart rate at multiple wavelengths, skin temperature with clinical-grade precision, sweat response, biomagnetic sensing, and motion across multiple axes
These signals are processed through advanced models specifically trained on diverse female biology, including women with PCOS, endometriosis, anovulation, and those entering perimenopause
Our models don’t assume a regular 28-day cycle; instead, they learn each individual woman’s patterns and adapt to what her body is doing in real time
It’s not enough to collect data, so we built Clair Health so that the data is always paired with the context a woman needs to understand and use it
Pulse 2.0 (Amit):Have you faced any challenges in your sector of work recently, and how did you overcome those challenges?
Clair Health (Abhinav):From a technical standpoint, one of our biggest challenges was ensuring that Clair is accurate
And accuracy starts with the hardware itself: no wearable on the market carried the sensors we needed, so we had to design and build our own, along with building our own algorithms and models
Optical sensors on wearables can behave differently across skin tones, and most existing cycle-tracking models are built around an assumed 28-day cycle that fails the 30% of women with irregular cycles
We intentionally built our models on diverse cycle data, which includes common conditions like PCOS, endometriosis, and anovulation
We are also conducting rigorous testing across a wide range of ages, BMI ranges, cycle types, and skin tones to make sure Clair works for every woman
Clair Health (Jenny):The femtech space has a trust problem that predates us. For years, women have been handed tools that oversimplified their biology rather than genuinely understood it
On top of that, most of the research and technology in healthcare was built around male physiology, which means we’re working in a space that has historically been underfunded and under-researched
We’ve approached this by making education a core part of what we do. Beyond explaining how Clair works, our goal is to help women understand why continuous hormone monitoring matters for their overall health
Closing that knowledge gap is essential to building the trust our category needs
The challenge of building something that has never been built before, in a space that has historically been overlooked, requires patience and a high standard of rigor
We believe the bar for women’s health technology should be higher than it has been, and that commitment to doing this right is how we’re working to overcome those challenges
Pulse 2.0 (Amit):What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones?
Clair Health:One of our most significant milestones was validating the science behind Clair through our prototype testing
We collected more than 5,000 days of continuous physiological data across 127 menstrual cycles from over 40 women, intentionally capturing a wide range of cycle types, ages, BMI ranges, and skin tones
From wearable sensors alone, Clair achieved 94.10% cycle phase classification accuracy and 87% LH surge detection sensitivity with timing accuracy within 1.2 days
Knowing that noninvasive continuous hormone monitoring was not only possible, but accurate, was a defining moment for us
We also announced Clair publicly in February and have since built a waitlist of 25,000 women, which speaks to just how much there is need for this kind of tool
This led to delivering our working prototype, a major moment. It proved that the sensor fusion approach we had theorized and built could translate real-time physiological signals into accurate hormonal insights
And holding our first working device was a moment we’ll never forget, proof that the sensing approach we designed from scratch could translate real-time physiological signals into accurate hormonal insights
Pulse 2.0 (Amit):Are you able to discuss funding and/or revenue metrics?
Clair Health (Jenny & Abhinav):We recently closed $11.6 million in funding, backed by Khosla Ventures, a16z Speedrun, AI in Health Fund, Brydge Club, Cartan Capital, AGI House, Insiders VC, Ann Wojcicki, and others
This investor interest has reflected the broader momentum in the women’s health space and the need for what we’re building
We’re focused on building the strongest possible foundation, both technically and clinically
As we move toward our product launch later this year, the fundraising process is very much a part of supporting that and the continued research we’ll be conducting
Pulse 2.0 (Amit):What differentiates the company from its competition?
Clair Health (Abhinav):The combination of continuous personalized monitoring, on-device privacy, and insights grounded in rigorous women-specific science is what makes Clair different
Clair doesn’t assume a regular cycle or rely on population averages. It learns each woman’s individual patterns and adapts to them
Most tools in this space offer a snapshot in time or a prediction based on assumed norms
Clair offers continuous, personalized insight backed by models trained on diverse female physiology and leading experts in women’s health, reproductive endocrinology, and sports medicine
Clair Health (Jenny):Most wearables and cycle-tracking apps treat women’s health as a feature or an add-on to a product that was built around someone else
At Clair Health, women’s health is not a feature; it’s the entire foundation
We built the product from the ground up around diverse female biology
We’re also the only wearable processing all hormone inference on-device, meaning your most sensitive health data never leaves your phone because privacy is non-negotiable for us
Pulse 2.0 (Amit):What are some of the company’s future goals?
Clair Health (Jenny & Abhinav):Our long-term vision is for Clair Health to become a woman’s one-stop re from her first period through perimenopause and beyond
We want to shift women’s healthcare from reactive to preventative, giving women the tools to anticipate changes in their health, rather than only react to them
Hormones are one of the body’s earliest signaling systems, and when tracked continuously, they open a window into metabolic health, cognitive function, bone density, cardiovascular risk, and conditions like PCOS and endometriosis
Our goal is to give women the ability to read the signals their bodies are already producing
We believe the future of healthcare is noninvasive, deeply personalized, and accessible to every woman, and Clair is our contribution to that future
