Emm raises $9M to make its smart menstrual cup a reality

UK femtech company Emm has closed a £6.7M ($9 million) seed fundraise to develop one of the first “smart” menstrual cups and tackle female incontinence.

The round is led by Double Down Digital, Aglaé Ventures and several others, plus investors Gareth Williams (founder of Skyscanner), Ruben Englund (CEO/founder of Universal Avenue), Courteney Munroe (Head of GUMI Investment Management Europe), and Henrik Lenberg. The round is led by Lunar Ventures, with participation from Alumni Ventures and BlueLion Global, and it will be used to fund the company’s UK launch and further R&D.

Founded by Jenny Button, Emm is a combination of medical-grade silicone and ultra-thin sensing technology, as well as an app that translates signals emanating from menstrual fluid into tailored insights. The company’s gamble is simple but bold: period blood is an underused data stream that, analyzed over time, could offer insights into cycle patterns and help with the earlier detection of reproductive health conditions.

The smart cup: how Emm’s menstrual device works

At the root, Emm behaves like a standard cup — gathering rather than absorbing flow — and housed sensors capture cycle-relevant signals.

The app contextualizes those readings with logged user-reported symptoms to visualize trends over the course of a month and to flag unusual changes that are worth bringing up with a clinician.

Emm isn’t framing the device as a diagnostic tool from the get-go. Rather, the initial emphasis is on providing users better self-tracking and more clinician-oriented longitudinal data that can be easily shared with healthcare providers. It’s that data layer that sets Emm apart from typical cups and even from wrist-based wearables, which tend not to factor in menstrual physiology pragmatically.

Why menstrual health data matters for diagnostics

The World Health Organization estimates that about 10% of people of reproductive age are impacted by endometriosis, and studies often cite an average seven- to nine-year gap from the onset of symptoms to diagnosis. The lag is often assigned to vague complaints and incomplete documentation of cycle history and bleeding patterns on the part of clinicians.

Menstrual flow provides its own special biological window, containing hormones, immune markers and tissue not present in venous blood that can offer insights into women’s health. Studies featured in The Lancet’s series on menstrual health and ongoing research from academic labs suggest that standardized, objective tracking of characteristics of bleeding could improve screening for conditions like endometriosis, adenomyosis and fibroids — or at least provide more efficient referrals.

Femtech founders have long posited that the “invisible data gap” in women’s health is, in part, driven by undermeasurement of menstrual parameters. Emm’s approach — to capture signals passively during normal care — aims to narrow that gap without adding extra steps to the user’s day.

Funding details and Emm’s go-to-market plans and timing

Lunar Ventures led the seed, while Emm described the round as a strategic one. The company claims there are over 30,000 pre-orders on its waitlist, and it will begin to ship first in the UK before reaching the U.S. The capital will be applied to manufacturing, optimizing the algorithm and clinical collaborations that help validate Emm’s data in real-world settings.

The regulatory road will be closely watched. Menstrual cups usually fit into existing device classifications, but adding sensors and making health claims may prompt more review. In the UK, that means UKCA marking through the MHRA. In the U.S., it’s a 510(k) pathway (but see below for additional information). Emm’s initial framing as a tracking tool rather than a diagnostic may help to fast-track the first stage of approvals.

Privacy measures and data protections for Emm users

Emm says data sent through its app is encrypted, secured with two-factor authentication and anonymized or pseudonymized, with access limited to staff members who need it. That position jibes with GDPR rules around sensitive health data, and stems from broader lessons about the period-tracking category more generally — showing that where privacy practices are concerned, consumer trust can be as much or even more influenced by product performance.

Regulators have demonstrated that they will intervene when health apps overstep their boundaries. One of the higher-profile enforcement actions was related to a popular cycle-tracking app, a case that served as a reminder about the issues of consent, clear disclosures and limits on sharing with other companies. The question of Emm’s long-term credibility will rest on transparent governance, strong security and a willingness to give users granular control over their data.

The competitive landscape for smart menstrual cups

Smart menstrual cups have been tried before — most notably by crowdfunding projects that faltered at scale — and mainstream wearables still offer weak leads on menstrual physiology. Emm’s advantage will come down to durability of sensors, how it feels on the body and whether the app yields insights that are truly as clinically meaningful (rather than novel).

The femtech market is booming, with investors supporting solutions that go beyond symptom logging to measurable results. Researchers at PitchBook and Frost & Sullivan have observed that capital is continuing to flow into the fertility, menopause and pelvic health space, but differentiated data assets are still the rare commodity in the sector. If Emm can produce high-quality longitudinal datasets, it might be a partner for researchers, payers and digital health platforms.

What to watch next as Emm moves toward UK launch

Critical milestones include UK regulatory approval, on-schedule manufacturing and proof that Emm’s insights change user behavior or clinical decision-making. A pipeline of studies on heavy bleeding, pain patterns or cycle irregularity would indicate that the product is more than a hardware novelty.

Emm’s longer road map suggests diagnostics and digital care tools that leverage menstrual biomarker data. For a category that has always been a bit short on objective measurements, it’s encouraging to see the potential of an accurate, easy-to-use and privacy-aware smart cup.