Orion’s $2,195 AI Mattress Pad Helps Sleep, but Price Limits Reach

Orion is essentially a cooling mattress pad controlled through a phone app. It adjusts temperature during sleep to reduce how often users wake up, the review said. Sleeping on it feels like flipping a pillow to find the cool side, except the entire bed becomes the cool side. The company says the system learns from sleep data to modulate temperatures and improve sleep quality. The reviewer was skeptical about how necessary those AI features are and how much they contribute to the $2,195 price.

By default, Orion starts cooling around a manually entered bedtime. It becomes colder as the user falls asleep and then slowly returns the mattress pad to room temperature at wake-up time, making it easier to get out of bed. The system ships in two large boxes but was easy to set up, according to the review. It looks like a plush mattress pad with tubes that connect to a tower resembling a bedside table. Users pour water into the control tower to run the cooling system. After months of use, the reviewer had not needed to refill the water. Couples can split the pad into two zones with separate cooling schedules.

The app can also show sleep data, including time spent in light sleep, deep sleep, and REM, as well as how often the user wakes up or tosses and turns. The review said such intimate health information is usually transmitted over the cloud for processing, creating a risk if a third party involved in the connection is hacked. Orion founder Harry Gestetner said the company invests heavily in security, but the review described the risk as inherent in connected health products.

Gestetner, 26, founded Orion after selling his previous company, the creator monetization platform Fanfix, for an estimated $65 million when he was 22. He told TechCrunch that building Fanfix came at a personal cost. He said he worked in the office seven days a week, neglected his health, slept and ate badly, stopped working out, and developed an inner ear condition that left him unable to work for a period. That experience led him toward the longevity movement, and he now describes sleep as the cornerstone of longevity. He told TechCrunch he believes the world is five years away from “longevity escape velocity,” the idea that AI science can add a year of life for every additional year a person is alive.

The review placed Orion in a broader market of sleep and longevity products. It mentioned Bryan Johnson, who has pursued extreme anti-aging treatments, as saying that sleep is the world’s most powerful drug. Gestetner said most people simply want to feel good and be able to play soccer with their grandchildren in older age, and he sees sleep as central to that goal.

Even as the reviewer praised Orion’s effect on sleep, the person said they would never spend $2,195 on it, though a Silicon Valley engineer earning $500,000 a year might feel differently. The review also compared Orion with the $59 Brick, saying the cheaper device had done as much to improve sleep by limiting phone use before bed, though the two products serve different purposes. Gestetner, a millionaire after his last exit, still understands that Orion’s price puts it out of reach for most people, according to the review.

Editor's Summary

TechCrunch’s review of Orion’s $2,195 AI-enabled mattress pad found that the cooling, app-controlled sleep system helped its reviewer sleep better over several months. The reviewer questioned the necessity of the AI features and said the price would keep most people away, while also raising privacy concerns about cloud-processed sleep data. Orion founder Harry Gestetner, who previously sold Fanfix for an estimated $65 million, acknowledged that the product is out of reach for most consumers.