Now is the time of year when many of those who resolved on December 31st to change their sedentary ways will begin to lower those ambitions. But for Strava, a popular exercise app, 2026 is off to a running start. This month reports emerged that the company had filed confidentially for a public listing and hired investment bankers to guide it through the process.
Valued at $2.2bn last year, Strava has been sprinting ahead ever since the pandemic, when stir-crazy populations turned to running to relieve the boredom of lockdowns. The app, founded in 2009 and originally focused on cycling, said last month that it has over 180m users, up from 135m a year before and only 48m in 2019. Although it has mostly kept quiet about its finances, in 2020 its former boss said it was profitable.
Strava’s success is all the more striking because it competes in a crowded field that includes apps from deep-pocketed rivals such as Apple, the iPhone maker, and Nike, the world’s biggest sportswear brand. It has succeeded by turning solo exercise into a social activity. Users can follow and give “kudos” to running pals and fitness celebrities alike, who can post their activity on the app. They can also use it to discover popular routes in an area (which caused a stir in 2018 when such “heatmaps” were shown to provide information on the layout of American military bases around the world).
That, in turn, has been made possible by its focus on data. Strava works with most smartphones and smartwatches, which can monitor a wearer’s heart rate and more. That allows enthusiasts to track not just overall times, but how they perform, say, running up a steep hill.
Strava now needs to convince a greater share of its users to upgrade to a paid subscription. Although many of them are on the app frequently, few are willing to stump up for it. The company does not disclose the share who do, but it is probably in the low single digits. That is why over the past few years it has been integrating automated coaching features into its app, which can analyse a user’s exercise performance and offer advice.
Last year Strava bought two smaller exercise apps that had developed such features. Michael Martin, its boss, has said that a public listing would provide it with “easy access to capital in case we wanted to do more and bigger acquisitions”. Securing such funding from venture capitalists obsessed with artificial intelligence may be tricky. Global VC investment in fitness startups last year was down by four-fifths from a peak of over $6bn in 2021, according to Crunchbase, a data provider. Public markets offer an alternative—and should help Strava remain a front-runner.■
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