Jenny Button first imagined Emm during the COVID-19 lockdown while using an Oura ring and a Whoop monitoring band. She was gaining insights about her body but realized there was a glaring gap in wearable technology: no device offered data on reproductive and menstrual health. “It seemed crazy to me, because these are things that every woman wants to be able to track and better understand,” she told TechCrunch. Inspired, she reached out to an engineer at Dyson, began testing her concept, and eventually devoted herself to creating a device that could provide this missing information.
After five years of development, thousands of design iterations, and extensive user testing, Button and her team have introduced the world’s first smart menstrual cup. The UK-based company recently secured a $9 million seed round led by Lunar Ventures, with participation from Alumni Ventures, The Labcorp Venture Fund, and BlueLion Global, as it prepares to launch the product next year.
The Emm cup functions like a traditional menstrual cup, collecting period blood rather than absorbing it, but its medical-grade silicone is embedded with ultra-thin, advanced sensors that gather detailed cycle data. Button believes this technology could transform research, diagnosis, and treatment of menstrual and reproductive health conditions. Menstrual blood, often overlooked in women’s health research, offers insights that standard circulatory blood tests cannot, potentially helping diagnose conditions like endometriosis, which affects one in ten women and often takes seven to ten years to detect.
“That delay is largely due to the lack of meaningful data and poor characterization of menstrual health in clinical settings,” Button said, emphasizing that reliable tools to track reproductive health have been largely absent until now. She also noted that one in three women experience severe reproductive health issues during their lifetime. The Emm app encrypts all collected data, employs two-factor authentication, and anonymizes personal identifiers to ensure privacy.
The $9 million funding will support the product’s UK launch, research and development, and future expansion into the U.S. market, expected in early 2027. The waitlist has already surpassed 30,000 pre-orders. Button sees menstrual health as the first step in a broader mission to improve women’s healthcare. “Ultimately, I believe we will have a profound impact on women’s health more broadly,” she said, envisioning potential expansion into diagnostics, digital care tools, and therapeutics. “Our mission is to accelerate diagnosis, equip people with the data to advocate for themselves, and ultimately help them take control of their own bodies and health journeys.”
