Pet Tech Industry News
Vetrax tracker acquired by Hill’s Pet Nutrition
Pet food giant Hill's has acquired the pet tracker Vetrax. Available only through veterinarians, Vetrax is a tracker that monitors health conditions for dogs, including skin conditions, weight management, arthritis and surgical rehab. Hill's plans to increase the...
Wagz buys another pet tech company
Following up on it's acquisition of Petzila, Wagz announced its purchase of the Link AKC smart collar. This is an interesting development considering Wagz just recently started shipping it's own smart collar. The Link AKC collar sells for $99, while the Wagz collar is...
Startup Actijoy to combine pet tracker with a smart food bowl
Startup Actijoy announced they have begun production of their pet fitness tracker. The Bluetooth-enabled tracker will connect to a pet's collar and will deliver info to your smart phone. Actijoy plans to also produce smart food and water bowls that will also interact...
Peter Thiel is backing a Startup that will Grow Pet Food in a Lab
Wild Earth, a Berkeley-based startup, is developing pet food from Koji, a type of fungus that is used to create soy sauce, miso soup and sake. Peter Thiel, the very rich entrepreneur who is probably known best for both co-founding PayPal and suing Gawker to death,...
Scratchpay Will Pay Your Vet Bill (but you have to pay them back)
Scratchpay, is a service that will finance vet bills for pets visiting vet clinics in the Scratchpay network. Sounds just like Care Credit. Anyway, Scratchpay just received $6.4 million in funding led by the Companion Fund, a $100 million pet-focused venture capital...
Chewy.com Enters Online Pharmacy Market
Chewy.com, the big ole ecommerce giant that was bought by PetSmart last year, announced that it would start selling pet meds on it's website. Naturally, this caused shares of PetMed Express, the largest online vet pharmacy, to tank over 10% in the last few days.
Two Pet Health Telemedicine Startups make Announcements
Fuzzy Pet Health and FirstVet, both startups in the pet health field, made news this week. California-based Fuzzy Pet Health launched a $10/month subscription telemedicine vet care plan in the greater San Francisco Bay area. Customers can send text, pictures and...
Toys, Smart Feeders and Pet Health Apps are Most Popular Pet Tech
According to a new report from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), interactive toys, smart feeders and pet health apps are the pet tech items pet owners say they are most likely to buy in the next year. CTA projects the US market for pet tech will sell 4.3...
Wagz buys Petzila
Wagz, a New Hampshire-based manufacturer of several pet tech products, has acquired Petzila, a San Jose-based manufacturer of the Petzi treat cam. Petzila was foreclosed upon by the contract manufacturer of the Petzi cams, Sigmatron International. As of June 6, the...