Sleep AI startup Asleep expands into prescription market with second pharma deal

Asleep, an AI startup that analyzes breathing sounds through a smartphone to diagnose sleep disorders, is rapidly moving beyond everyday wellness applications in IT, home appliances and finance — and into the prescription markets of established pharmaceutical companies. The company has drawn a string of partnership overtures from traditional drugmakers, emerging as a key player in the digital healthcare prescription space.

Asleep signed a domestic distribution and sales agreement with Handok for Chronotrack, a digital medical device that records sleep-rhythm patterns, the company said Friday. The deal comes roughly seven months after Asleep launched a co-sales arrangement with Chong Kun Dang in January for Apnotrack, a software tool that aids in diagnosing sleep apnea — marking Asleep's second entry into a pharmaceutical distribution network.

Chronotrack is a software-based medical device that digitally replaces the two-week sleep diary, a standard procedure in treating insomnia and sleep-rhythm disorders. The traditional method — in which patients manually recorded their sleep and wake times each morning from memory — has long been criticized for low patient compliance and significant subjective error.

By simply placing a smartphone beside the bed, Chronotrack automatically tracks breathing sounds and sleep movement over 14 nights, then generates a clinical report for physicians that includes the patient's chronotype, Sleep Regularity Index (SRI) and social jet lag. The device also qualifies as a non-reimbursed item under existing regulations, meaning clinics and hospitals can prescribe it immediately without going through a new insurance-coverage approval process — a factor that significantly lowers the barrier to adoption.

Behind Asleep's consecutive pharmaceutical partnerships lies a foundation of large-scale real-world data and growing clinical recognition of sleep regularity. According to Asleep's 2026 Annual Sleep Report, which analyzed more than 5.56 million nights of sleep data from roughly 370,000 people in South Korea, 56.2 percent of Koreans are evening-type "night owls" — about twice the global average. The average sleep-onset time was 12:51 a.m., the latest among major countries, and sleep efficiency tumbled from 83.8 percent at normal hours to 76.2 percent for those falling asleep after 3 a.m.

Academic research also points to sleep regularity as a more decisive health indicator than total sleep duration. A study published in the international journal SLEEP in 2024, which analyzed data from more than 60,000 participants in the UK Biobank, found that people who maintained regular sleep schedules had up to a 48 percent lower risk of death compared with those with irregular patterns. The SRI provided by Chronotrack is the same standard metric used in that study.

Asleep's precision diagnostic capabilities proved a natural fit for pharmaceutical companies seeking an integrated disease-management model. Chong Kun Dang, for instance, combined Apnotrack's early-screening function with its chronic-disease portfolio covering obesity, diabetes and hypertension, and within six months of launch had supplied the tool to more than 400 clinics and hospitals nationwide, including more than 10 tertiary care centers.

Handok plans to integrate Chronotrack's precise diagnostic and tracking functions with its existing lineup of prescription insomnia drugs and Sleepq, South Korea's first prescription-grade digital cognitive behavioral therapy device for insomnia. The goal is to build what Handok calls a "Handok Sleep Science" full-cycle care ecosystem — running from diagnosis and assessment via Chronotrack, through digital cognitive behavioral therapy via Sleepq, to prescription drug treatment.

Asleep's rapid rise as a preferred partner for pharmaceutical companies rests on solid technology validation and a distinctive commercialization track record. Founded in 2020, the company raised Series A and Series B funding rounds in 2022 and 2023, respectively, growing to a valuation of $90 million.

From its earliest days, Asleep focused on clinical validation, publishing joint research papers with Seoul National University Bundang Hospital and Stanford University School of Medicine in the international journal JMIR mHealth and uHealth, where its technology ranked first in performance among 11 commercially available sleep-monitoring devices. The company has also received international recognition — being selected as a partner by the US National Sleep Foundation and OpenAI, and participating in the development of global sleep-tech standards.

Building on that foundation, Asleep has forged partnerships with major South Korean conglomerates including LG Electronics, SK Telecom (integrated into its AI assistant A.), Samsung Electronics (built into Galaxy Tab as a native app), Samsung Life Insurance (The Health), Kyung Dong Navien and Jung Kwan Jang, weaving a dense consumer-facing sleep wellness ecosystem into everyday life.

Asleep is also expanding into hardware-integrated daily care, partnering with healthcare device company Tenmind to embed its sleep-monitoring software in an AI motion pillow and the next-generation sleep robot AI Sleepbot Pro.

The significance of Asleep's expansion lies in the business model it has established: combining the high clinical credibility of its software with the powerful sales networks of traditional pharmaceutical companies to capture the early prescription market, while vertically integrating daily-life data through hardware partnerships — a data-driven, full-cycle healthcare commercialization template.

"In an era of convergence where pharmaceuticals and digital technology meet, accurate and objective sleep records are the starting point for all treatment," Asleep CEO Lee Dong-heon said. "Building on the know-how we proved with Apnotrack in expanding to clinics and hospitals nationwide, we will work with Handok to successfully embed Chronotrack in clinical settings and change the paradigm of insomnia and sleep-rhythm treatment."