Smartwatches and fitness trackers are everywhere now, and more Americans are buying them than ever. But a new study suggests that owning one and actually getting meaningful health value out of it are two very different things.

Researchers from Yale School of Medicine analyzed data from 17,395 participants across three national survey cycles covering 2020, 2022, and 2024, and the picture they found is more complicated than the wearable industry would like to admit.

What the numbers actually show

Wearable device use among US adults climbed from 30.2% in 2020 to 41.1% in 2024. The problem is that everything else stayed flat or got worse. Only around half of wearable users reported wearing their device every day, and that number has not improved over time.

The data sharing numbers are even more concerning. Willingness to share wearable health data with doctors dropped from 81.3% in 2020 to 73.4% in 2024. Actual data sharing with clinicians barely moved, sitting at just 14.2% in 2020 and reaching only 19.2% in 2024. That means fewer than one in five wearable users are sharing their health data with the professionals who could actually use it to provide insights.

Why the gap keeps growing

The study found that better digital literacy made people more willing to share their data, but that willingness did not translate into actual sharing in practice. The researchers point to the health system itself as the main bottleneck.

Your doctor’s system is not set up to receive data from your wearable. Most medical records cannot connect with consumer devices, and there is no standard process for clinicians to routinely review what your Apple Watch or Fitbit has tracked.

The researchers conclude that simply getting more people to wear these devices will not close this gap. The health system needs to build the infrastructure to use the data that people are collecting.

Impulse Space, a startup founded by SpaceX engine guru Tom Mueller to build highly-maneuverable spacecraft, announced a $500 million Series D this week that it will use to hire as many as 200 new employees.

The round, led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC, with participation from Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Linse Capital, reflects investor interest in space and defense tech as the U.S. government hurls cash at national security problems and SpaceX gears up for its IPO.

Impulse is focused on in-space mobility. The company has developed a highly maneuverable platform called Mira that is targeted at U.S. Space Force buyers. It’s also building Helios, a vehicle designed to carry satellites rapidly to high orbits after they are dropped off in space closer to Earth.

President and COO Eric Romo told TechCrunch that the new capital will help the company build and test more space vehicles and emphasized the company’s hiring plans at a time when aerospace talent is in high demand.

While the company’s software teams are adopting AI coding tools, Romo said that when it comes to solving engineering problems in the real world, deep learning models aren’t quite ready for prime time. As the 13th employee at SpaceX back in 2003, Romo’s job was creating computer simulations of the company’s engine design to assess its performance.

“I considered it success if I got within 20% of the right answer, because the simulations were just not that good,” Romo said. “They’ve improved, but they’ve not improved that much, and so there’s not really any substitute for designing the thing, analyzing the thing, building it, and then getting it on the test stand.”

Romo suspects AI tools for hardware design may be slower to arrive because the right training data is hard to find, compared to the amount of text and code available on the internet to train LLMs. “If you want to go, say, find the best designs for a turbo pump seal package in the world, you’re not going to find those online,” he points out.

Impulse started with a focus on propulsion and evolved to build spacecraft, requiring the company to add more expertise in the form of engineers who build vehicle structures and flight computers. One reason the company recently opened an office in Colorado is that aerospace talent has more options today — instead of just going to Los Angeles, engineers can find work in Seattle, Denver, or Texas.

Next up for the company is another launch of its Mira spacecraft, which made its third flight late last year. That flight wasn’t without incident — a problem with its navigation system led it to expend much of its propellant early on. Romo said the company is prepping a new Mira mission that is expected to launch before the end of the year.

GoPro warned on Monday that there is “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.” The action-camera maker reported a 26% revenue decline in Q1 and expects to breach several loan covenants. Shares fell as much as 14%.

The cause is memory. GoPro said its earnings forecast has been “significantly impacted” by an 80% to 115% increase in memory prices. In April, suppliers informed the company of a planned reduction in memory supply that would further reduce forecasted sales. The same DRAM reallocation that is killing the cheap smartphone is now threatening to kill GoPro.

The mechanism is the one we detailed last week. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have redirected wafer capacity from consumer DRAM to high-bandwidth memory for AI data centres. HBM margins run at 70% or higher. Consumer DRAM margins sit between 20% and 30%. The memory makers chose the higher-margin customer. Everyone else pays more or gets less.

GoPro does not have the purchasing power to absorb the price increase. It is not Apple, which can negotiate quarterly contracts and pass costs onto consumers buying $1,000 phones. It is a sub-$1 billion revenue company whose products sell for $300 to $500 and depend on commodity memory to store high-resolution video. When memory costs double, the product becomes unprofitable.

The company has received waivers from its lender after failing to comply with loan covenants. It does not expect to have enough liquidity to meet obligations if default provisions are triggered and outstanding debt becomes due. It has a $50 million second-lien facility from Farallon Capital Management and a revolving credit facility with Wells Fargo as agent.

GoPro has engaged advisors to evaluate strategic alternatives including a potential sale or merger. It is also exploring opportunities in defence and aerospace for “new markets and product categories.” The company already announced plans to cut 23% of its global staff in April.

The defence pivot echoes Faraday Future’s robotics pivot: a consumer electronics company under financial pressure reaching for a higher-margin, government-funded market where the competitive dynamics are different. Whether GoPro’s ruggedised camera expertise translates into defence contracts is unproven.

The only near-term supply relief is coming from China. ChangXin Memory Technologies’ DRAM has been spotted inside Corsair’s retail DDR5 kits. But CXMT is also planning to convert 20% of its capacity to HBM because the margins are irresistible. The consumer memory shortage is structural, not cyclical.

The memory crisis is visible across consumer electronics. The Asus ROG NUC 16 costs $1,200 more than last year’s model, partly due to DDR5 prices. Dell hiked laptop prices 15-20% in December. Apple agreed to pay Samsung a 100% premium on LPDDR5X for the iPhone. These companies can absorb the cost. GoPro cannot.

GoPro was founded in 2002 by Nicholas Woodman. It went public in 2014 at a $3 billion valuation. The company popularised the action camera category and built a brand that became synonymous with extreme sports and adventure content. Its share price peaked above $90 in 2014. It trades below $1 today.

The going-concern warning makes GoPro the most visible corporate casualty of the AI memory reallocation. It will not be the last. Any consumer electronics company with thin margins, limited purchasing power, and dependence on commodity DRAM is facing the same calculus. The AI boom created enormous wealth for three memory makers and the hyperscalers they supply. GoPro is on the other side of that equation.