We’re inundated with data, but for many people, finding a way to make sense of it is elusive.
When it comes to health data, however, one company thinks it’s found a way to help—with weekly AI-generated personal podcasts for users that provide them with updates on their latest health and fitness statistics, sleep performance, and more.
The podcasts are the latest product offering from Eternal, a health and longevity startup geared toward avid athletes. The company combines various services like body scans and blood work and turns them into personalized reports and readouts.Launched in early 2025 with a $13.25 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Eternal lets its customers connect their wearables or upload their lab data to get started. Health data is compiled and analyzed over time, allowing the platform to track changes and update users on their progress toward various health goals, such as losing weight or getting better sleep.
And users can now listen to a short, weekly “audio experience” to get their latest updates.
Eternal was founded by Alex Mather, who previously founded the sports news publication The Athletic, which was sold to The New York Times in 2022.
The new venture, Mather tells Fast Company, is a way to meld his editorial background with the world of health and fitness—which he is particularly passionate about.
“It started with labs—we’d take a blood lab or DEXA scan, and we saw very few folks going in depth on the reports that we sent them,” Mather says. “We were creating so much content for them, and they weren’t consuming it.”
That, he notes, was a revelation. “We quickly realized that most people want a story or a narrative. They don’t want to look at numbers.”
Thinking back on his experience of creating and launching successful podcasts during his time at The Athletic, Mather got an idea. “What if we could combine a health and fitness podcast into something more personalized? We had the first step,” he says.
Get it on Mondays
Eternal recently rolled out the new feature, and with users connecting their wearables or updating their lab work over the course of the week, they’re able to get their own personalized audio experience on Monday mornings.
The content focuses on core areas—sleep, movement, strength training, cardio training, and recovery—and is supplemented by chat features that prompt or ask users about how they’re feeling and other topics via text message.
The platform takes it all in, analyzes it, and uses AI to produce a corresponding, personalized audio experience.
The feature comes as companies across sectors are experimenting with novel ways to deliver content to users with the help of generative artificial intelligence. Amazon, for instance, has introduced AI-generated shopping podcasts and audio features relating to product descriptions and reviews.
While there may be cause for concern related to AI hallucinations or inaccuracies in a user’s readout, Mather says the company is constantly refining its evaluation framework to help minimize incorrect information and unsupported claims.
Regarding privacy, Eternal says the podcasts are not publicly searchable or discoverable, and are securely delivered directly to the user. Further, the company says that no identifiable information beyond the user’s first name is shared.
As for whether people actually like it, Mather says that the feedback the company has gotten so far has been positive.
It’s a passive way to absorb the information, he says, which doesn’t make a health update feel like a lecture or a chore, and it’s quick—around five minutes.
“We wanted to get people engaged with their health data in a meaningful way,” Mather says. And now, “the priority for us is to scale this idea out.”
