The top 10 most innovative companies in wellness of 2023

Explore the full 2023 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 540 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the firms making the biggest impact across 54 categories, including advertising, beauty, design, and more.

One silver lining to the global pandemic is that, at last, medical professionals and everyday citizens alike are approaching well-being as not just a matter of fitness and leanness, but how your mind and body are functioning holistically. This year’s top 10 most innovative companies in Wellness list highlights a range of new (or newly prioritized aspects) of holistic fitness taking, the whole individual into account.

Sleep—now a known link to staving off such degenerative diseases as Alzheimer’s—has moved to the forefront, with products like Eight Sleep’s thermo-regulating and -tracking mattress topper bringing quantitative metrics to sleep quality at an affordable price. Harm reduction, rather than abstinence, is a new buzz word among addiction experts, and the Reframe app helps drinkers manage cravings, see patterns, and ultimately lower their alcohol intake using science-backed approaches. Overcoming fertility issues without intrusive, expensive, and time-consuming doctor visits is the mission of Conceive, an app and community that guides would-be parents on a supportive and personalized journey toward a successful pregnancy. Attaining pleasure from sex, too, is now considered part of a healthy lifestyle, with companies such as Tabu focusing on women who, in generations prior, would have been written off as too old to enjoy or even achieve an orgasm.

Of course, the body remains half the equation when it comes to wellness, and companies are finding creative ways to optimize physical fitness. Whoop’s new wearable tracks a swimmer’s metrics (heart rate, calories burned, and more) while in the pool and eliminates the drag of other types of sensors. Omorpho’s weighted vests increase strength with distributed ball bearings and optimize workouts by connecting to an app accessed directly by the athletic attire (and some Wi-Fi). Premier Dental’s oral care system replicates a visit to the dentist every time you brush.

And unexpected categories are falling into the aegis of “wellness” too,
even the air we breathe. Consider Vitruvi’s first totally recyclable and natural air freshener sprays.

What was once seen as simply a diet and exercise industry has expanded to include mental health, microbiomes, relationships, parenting, happiness, and so much more. After years avoiding a scary virus, consumers are finding a host of new products and services on the market that are catering to both mind and body.

1. Eight Sleep

For helping us get smart about sleep

Launched through a crowdfunding campaign in 2015, Eight Sleep has grown to become the quant-kids’ favored sleeping situation, and now you don’t even need to invest in a full mattress to get its smart thermo-regulation and sleep-health tracking functions in your bedroom. Eight Sleep’s Pod 3 Cover, which was released in July 2022, brings the price down (to $2,045 from $2,895 for the full mattress) by providing serious sleep trackers a pad that simply goes over your existing mattress, but contains a grid of water fed by a small bedside tower that can customize temperatures from 55 degrees to 110 degrees in two separate zones. To fully optimize sleep, the water slowly warms up throughout the night, then gently awakens you through a vibrational alarm clock. Analytics on an app track your sleep performance, consistency, tosses and turns, heart rate, and sleep phases, then give you suggestions for making every cycle count. Clinical studies have shown that users increase deep sleep by up to 34%, with results of up to 10% seen after just one week of sleeping on the Pod 3. Not surprisingly, the company has raised $160 million, including from celebrity investors such as Alex Rodriguez and Kevin Hart, who also say they are dedicated users.

Read more about Eight Sleep, honored as No. 43 on Fast Company’s list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2023.

2. Reframe

For changing drinking habits one craving at a time

Ziyi Gao and Vedant Pradeep met during a class at Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and, while still in school, started building what would become Reframe. Initially funded by Georgia Tech’s CreateX program that supports student entrepreneurs, the pair hired psychologists, psychiatrists, and researchers from universities such as Emory, Stanford, and Harvard to develop and write neuroscience-based program modules that help people reconsider the way they engage with alcohol. Unlike other quitting-assistance apps, Reframe, which launched in 2020, essentially provides cognitive behavioral therapy on demand, offering a personalized daily alcohol reduction program, community support groups, progress tracking, craving management tools, and coaching, all for $14 per month. In 2022, Reframe expanded significantly and began running live, round-the-clock group coaching sessions so that people in need can get expert support 24/7 at no additional cost. Reframe has been downloaded more than 2 million times worldwide and grew from $4M to $13M in annual recurring revenue from 2021 to 2022. The company raised $10 million in April 2022 at a $350 million valuation.

3. Cleo

For giving parents a way to fill the gaps in their healthcare plans

Cleo begins where traditional healthcare coverage ends. The platform is the only company to offer employees and their families end-to-end caregiver support so that they can address specific challenges such as starting or expanding their family, balancing work life and parenting, adult caregiving, alternative paths to parenthood, end-of-life care, and mental health support around grief. Cleo has raised more than $80 million since its 2016 launch, from the likes of former LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh, and Box CEO Aaron Levie, and its benefits are offered by major companies such as Salesforce, Pepsi, Pinterest, and Redbull. In 2022, the company added IRL solutions for parents of neurodivergent children, as well as after-school enrichment classes for all learners. As of 2022, Cleo is now the only global employee benefit platform that provides direct support for parents through all stages of life. It acts as a single-source benefit for working parents of special-needs children or those caring for an aging adult. Cleo’s membership grew by 60% in 2022.

4. Tabu

For destigmatizing sexual wellness among older women

Many of the symptoms related to menopause, it turns out, can be alleviated through regular sexual activity, with or without a partner. Tabu founder and former marketing exec Natalie Waltz took this information and launched a wellness company in late 2020 to give women age 50 to 80 not just targeted pleasure but also education and support. Tabu’s breakout Golden Hour Kit comes with a warming personal massager shaped to stimulate blood flow and a heat-enhancing lubricant that’s packaged to look like a beautiful facial serum (to look unassuming in one’s medicine cabinet). But beyond selling just tools—don’t call them toys!—Tabu provides confidential “office hours” with sexual health experts via Zoom, where any and all questions (Is pain during sex normal? How can I increase my libido?) are welcome. More than three-quarters of Office Hours attendees say these sessions have helped them have more productive conversations with their healthcare providers, and the Goop-sanctioned Tabu kits can barely be kept in stock online and at Anthropologie stores. In 2022, Tabu released The Pearl, a petite vulva stimulator created in partnership with clinicians and the Tabu community that offers a broad range of intensities designed to promote tissue health and orgasm pleasure. In 2022, the company grew sales nearly 4x, year over year.

5. Thorne HealthTech

For taking the ick factor out of at-home gut health tests

Thorne HealthTech has been creating kits to test users’ health since 2010, increasingly incorporating AI to precisely describe an individual’s internal state (microbiome, hormone levels, and other biomarkers), then make lifestyle, diet, and habit recommendations. The company also recommends supplements, which it develops based on peer-reviewed research conducted by the likes of the Mayo Clinic and the National Institutes of Health. In 2022, the company added a gut health test that reduces the barrier to entry: Rather than collecting a stool sample at home for the platform to analyze for inflammation, immune readiness, pathogens, and more, customers can now just swipe with a “microbiome wipe” and ship it off to HQ for analysis. This is on top of the company’s OneDraw blood-drawing device, which allows lightly trained professionals to draw blood painlessly into a removable, contamination-free cartridge that can be shipped to a lab, without a cold chain, to be scanned for blood-sugar levels in diabetics. OneDraw was approved by the FDA in 2019 and became Thorne’s in May 2021 through its acquisition of Drawbridge Health, and was widely used during the pandemic to conduct population-based studies remotely. (In November 2022, OneDraw was selected for use in President Biden’s cancer moonshot project run by the Department of Defense.) After the company’s September 2021 IPO, net sales grew 21.7% year over year to $58.4 million, with direct-to-consumer sales growth of 47.2%.

6. Premier Dental

For bringing the expertise of a dental hygienist to your bathroom

This fourth-generation, family-owned company has been making dental products for professionals for 110 years; now it’s taken all that knowledge and applied it to its first direct-to-consumer product, Izzo. The 4-in-1 oral care system, which was released in February 2022, one-ups other electric toothbrushes in the market by incorporating state-of-the-art oscillation, plus a switch-out head that allows users to pop on a polishing tool. (Studies have shown that polishers, along the lines of what dental hygienists use, can more safely and effectively remove stains than whitening toothpastes, and with less abrasiveness.) The kit also includes a flexible scaler to remove debris and soft plaque from hard-to-reach areas, as well as a UVC (as opposed to UVA or UVB) sanitizer case designed to kill 99.9% of germs that can linger on a brush head. The sanitizer case doubles as a convenient and compact travel case. The company’s sales have grown 20% since 2020.

7. Omorpho

For pushing athletes to their highest potential by weighing them down

Move over, 1980s ankle weights. “Gravity sportswear” firm Omorpho began sewing distributed ball-bearing-like beads into its athletic attire in 2021, allowing for increased calorie burn and cardiovascular fitness. In November 2022, the brand leveled up with its G-Vest+, which incorporates that trademarked MicroLoad technology but feels like a second skin. The vest also connects through a tappable chip that activates the company’s Gravity Flow Training App, essentially giving users a portable gym that can travel with them anywhere (and still look pretty fashionable). Peer-reviewed studies published in the Journal of Australian Strength and Conditioning showed that after training in the vest for five weeks, athletes increased their jump height by 9%, speed by up to 3%, and calorie burn by up to 8%. The private company was recently selected by the 2022 Major League Baseball Sports Science Expo as an apparel brand that actually increases athletes’ performance. Omorpho closed a $6 million fundraising round in May 2022, bringing the company to a $26 million valuation; it has also forged distribution partnerships with Carbon38 and Equinox.

8. Whoop

For optimally tracking workouts in the water

Whoop launched its first fitness wearable in 2015, but it wasn’t until its recent partnership with athletic fabric brand TYR that the company allowed swimmers to track performance seamlessly while they’re in the water. TYRxWHOOP swimsuits, which debuted in fall 2022, have a clever inner pocket that holds the WHOOP 4.0 sensor fast to the skin, thus eliminating drag created by a wrist-worn wearable. The suits for men and women are made with antimicrobial fabric that’s also 100% chlorine proof, 100% fade proof, and able to track swimmers’ various heart rate metrics and calories burned for more than 300 hours. And these smart suits are easy to find: They landed on the racks of 250 brick-and-mortar stores nationwide, including Best Buy and Dick’s Sporting Goods. In August 2021, the private company announced a $200 million Series F, bringing Whoop’s valuation to $3.6 billion and making it the most valuable standalone wearables company in the world.

9. Vitruvi

For considering the planet while reinventing the air freshener

Vancouver-based home-scenting company Vitruvi released its Natural Air Freshener Sprays—which the company touts as the first fine-mist room spray without harmful propellants, synthetic fragrances, volatile organic compounds, sulfates, parabens, phthalates, formaldehyde, and other harmful ingredients—in May 2022. The bottles use the natural propellant nitrogen to mist 100% pure essential oils into the air, which is better for the environment than the aerosols and synthetic chemicals used in traditional air fresheners. Moreover, every component within the bottle is completely recyclable, making it the first zero-waste air freshener. Vitruvi has sold more than 13,000 Natural Air Freshener Sprays so far, through 84 high-profile wholesale partners, including Erewhon, Whole Foods, Goop, and Bluemercury. The eight-figure business, launched in 2015, also sells design-forward essential oil diffusers and humidifiers; style junkies post photos of these items all over their socials.

10. Conceive

For creating a community for women on their fertility journeys

Launched in 2022, Conceive‘s eight-week program takes all the scattered online help for those trying to get pregnant—community groups, cycle trackers, educational forums with experts—and added one-to-one coaching sessions to create a direct-to-consumer platform that improves pregnancy outcomes. For $29 per month, the program’s members receive an action plan for a successful pregnancy. After publishing its proof of concept in 2021, the digital fertility company raised $3.7 million from Kindred Ventures, then launched in beta in April 2022. In December, the app opened to the public. Founder Lauren Berson says she took the lessons she learned while VP of Strategic Growth at Weight Watchers—namely, hiring coaches who have faced the same issues—and applied them to fertility. Conceive’s 24/7 coaching is supported by nurses from some of the top fertility clinics in the country, including Cornell and CCRM. Conceive’s numbers are promising: In the company’s first sample group, 73% of members became pregnant, 27% uncovered new diagnoses, and 90% said they felt supported in their fertility journey.