This startup built a Fitbit for your brain to combat chronic stress

Antonio Forenza was moving arsenic caput of probe and improvement astatine Rakuten Symphony, a telecom subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate, erstwhile helium realized that helium needed to find a amended mode to negociate his accent levels.

A fewer years earlier, helium had mislaid 40 pounds with the assistance of an Apple Watch, which counted steps and tracked his calorie burn, and helium began wondering if determination was a akin instrumentality to measure his stress.

“I wanted to suffer 40 pounds of stress, and realized there’s nary wearable for that today,” Forenza told TechCrunch.

That’s erstwhile Forenza realized he’d stumbled onto a spread successful the user wellness market. Drawing connected his engineering background, helium decided to physique the instrumentality himself, utilizing a much than century-old technology: the electroencephalogram (EEG) to observe and measurement electrical enactment successful the brain.

While EEG is utilized clinically to diagnose diseases specified arsenic epilepsy and slumber disorders, it tin besides observe intelligence accent by measuring high-frequency encephalon waves called beta waves. When those accelerated beta waves persist for extended periods, they tin pb to exhaustion, insomnia, and intelligence distress.

Forenza collaborated with information scientists and biomedical engineers to make Awear, a tiny instrumentality worn down the receptor for continuous brainwave monitoring. The instrumentality transmits results to an app, which provides accusation astir the wearer’s temper and offers AI-powered coaching proposal for managing accent and improving affectional resilience.   

“Our encephalon is phenomenal astatine self-adjusting and makes america judge we are not stressed,” Forenza said. “It’s good to beryllium successful ‘fight oregon flight’ each erstwhile successful a while. It’s portion of our nature. But if you autumn into the trap of changeless ‘fight oregon flight’, past that leads to chronic stress, depression, anxiety.”

Forenza claims that Awear helps users proactively intercept excessive accent earlier it leads to negative wellness effects.

Awear is simply a Startup Battlefield 200 finalist astatine TechCrunch Disrupt 2025,  where it won wellness class transportation competition.

While Stanford University’s psychiatry section is presently investigating the instrumentality to observe disorder and disorientation successful aged patients aft surgery, Forenza’s superior absorption is connected selling Awear to idiosyncratic consumers, akin to the attack taken by the Oura ringing and different user wearables.

Earlier this year, Awear closed a pre-seed backing circular led by Hustle Fund, Niremia Collective, Techstars, and The Pitch Fund, and the institution plans to rise a $5 cardinal effect circular successful aboriginal 2026.  

For now, Awear is disposable for acquisition lone done its early-access program. The instrumentality is disposable to aboriginal adopters — a radical that already includes galore different startup founders, a notoriously stressed-out radical — for $195, which includes a complimentary beingness app subscription.

After raising its effect round, the institution volition motorboat a Kickstarter campaign, pursuing a strategy utilized by devices specified arsenic Peloton and Oura. “It is simply a way that worked for galore different wearables. It gives you a batch of visibility, and it’s a bully mode to get customers,” Forenza said.