The scent-to-sleep connection is seemingly much more impactful than you’d think! Kimba is rethinking the role of scents in aiding sleep by building the first personalized sleep scent system.

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Kimba is building a device that aims to improve sleep based on scent therapy. It continuously reads biometrics such as heartbeat, breathing patterns, movement, and stress indicators throughout the night and releases the right natural scent at the precise moment it is needed during the sleep cycle. It formulates personalized scents from a library of 12 options made from water-based and plant-derived ingredients. The device also allows integrations with wearables including WHOOP, Oura, Apple Watch, and Garmin for more precise data collection. 

Check it out: kimba.ai

Kimba's device is available for pre-order at $299 with $99 due upfront. It comes with a six month supply of scent capsules included and full access to the Kimba app and platform, AI-powered sleep insights and recommendations, as well as priority support. After that, the membership costs $299 every six months.

If you’d like to explore opportunities with Kimba, let us know by replying directly to this email!

Kimba founder Ben Fuxbruner is a mechanical engineer who graduated in 2021. Throughout his career, he worked as a strategic planner for Intel, where he was part of the international Silicon Engineering Strategy Office and led an electromechanical department. There, he planned and developed new solar technologies and a system optimizing water production, benefiting over four million people on the African continent. 

But his interest in building something dedicated to sleep was driven by an earlier chapter in his life, when he was a special forces commander from 2013 to 2016. 

After a near-death injury, Ben started to suffer from PTSD and chronic insomnia, which began what he describes as one of the hardest challenges of his life.

As it often happens, personal challenges can also act as the fuel we need to build something extraordinary. 

For example, remember Knox Systems? Getting authorized to sell software to the U.S. government was such a slow process that co-founder and CEO Irina Denisenko decided to do something about it, and now it takes less than 90 days, costing 90% less.

So Fuxbruner began his journey by building an engineering project around a tool that would help people sleep better, swimming against the tide of tools that just track and measure sleep.

After years of research, clinical trials, product development, and thousands of nights of sleep data, Kimba was shared with the world in June 2026. The main goal is to build a new category in sleep to help people for whom a good night's sleep has become a far-off dream. 

No scrolling through your Instagram or TikTok feed. Actually, no blue screens two hours before sleeping. Leave your phone in another room. Cozy blankets, a hot tea, a skincare routine, meditation, no heavy exercise… 

The list of tips to better sleep goes on endlessly. 

More and more people are desperate to sleep better at night. But more hours on the pillow don't guarantee a good night's sleep, because waking up without interruptions and feeling rested instead of more tired than when you went to bed matters just as much. When was the last time you went to bed and woke up naturally feeling refreshed to start your day? Yeah, we get it, too. 

And we’re not alone, as more than 16% of the global population is estimated to have insomnia, one of the 80 possible sleep disorders a person may incur that impacts the quantity and quality of sleep. Unsurprisingly, not sleeping well affects quality of life and increases the chance of developing depression, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and dementia. Adding insult to injury, 100 million Americans of all ages report not getting an adequate amount of sleep. That can’t bode well. 

Kimba’s solution to help solve sleep problems comes at the right time. The wellness market keeps growing and is now a whopping $2 trillion market globally. In the U.S. alone, it is estimated to represent more than $500 billion in annual spend, growing at four to five percent each year. Those who spend the most belong to Gen Z and millennials, who make up 36% of the adult population in the U.S. and drive more than 41% of annual wellness spend. And natural solutions are also a major interest. People want more natural products, with 60% of consumers saying clean labels significantly influence their buying decisions.  

There are now a great number of gadgets that allow us to better understand our sleep, from smartwatches to rings to bed cooling systems. Some of them even congratulate you when you get enough quality sleep or tell you which animal you are based on your sleep pattern and specific sleep needs.

Enter Kimba’s device, aiming to improve the quality of sleep through another one of our senses, smell. It uses adaptive scent therapy, which is, to say the least, a really interesting approach.

The system is also interesting because it’s a familiar business model to people who already use gadgets to monitor their health. First, you pay upfront for the device itself. Then you purchase a membership to the scent mix every six months. It’s plenty of time to test and see the results, although newer entrants are challenging the subscription-based approach.

If it works as well as described, it’s basically having a beauty sleep guarantee for $30 a month. This seems like a reasonable price for the 36% of young adults in the U.S. who have been actively investing in wellness. In other words, it’s a potentially massive market. 

If Kimba keeps scaling the reach of its clinically proven product and continues innovating in the scent space, while staying clearly differentiated from aromatherapy (a comparison the less educated public may make, which can push away more skeptical audiences), it can be a strong product to revolutionize the sleep market and create a new age of sleeping beauties.