Kayla Itsines has sold her health and fitness app to a US-tech giant. Video / SWEAT
Australia fitness star Kayla Itsines and her ex-fiance Tobi Pearce have sold their global health and fitness app, SWEAT, to a US-based company.
The duo, who created the workout platform from a humble e-book in 2015, reportedly sold it for A$400 million ($425m) to tech giant iFIT Health & Fitness Inc.
Since establishing it six years ago, the app has been downloaded more than 30 million times and generated A$99.5m ($106m) in revenue, in 2020 alone, the Australian Financial Review reports.
In an Instagram post on Tuesday, Itsines, 30, announced the takeover, but reassured members SWEAT will remain a stand-alone brand.
She said the "epic change" means more fitness variety on SWEAT and more choices when you open the app.
"I will still be your trainer and all of our programs are not changing or going anywhere," the personal trainer told her 13.1 million followers.
Kayla Itsines and her ex-fiance Tobi Pearce. Photo / Instagram@Kaylaitsines
"iFIT is a global health and fitness technology company that will invest in SWEAT to strengthen our member experience. They will also help us expand into other countries and help to diversify our workout content which is so exciting."
The Adelaide-based personal trainer said it has been an "incredible journey so far" as she reminisced about running one-on-one sessions in her parents' backyard.
"Those sessions kept growing and growing and slowly we built up a community and then in 2015, we launched the @SWEAT app.
"Today, (SWEAT) has 13 personal trainers and hundreds of thousands of women using SWEAT every single week across 26 programs."
The mother-of-one said it's just "crazy to think how far we have come and how big the Sweat family is now".
She went on to thank those who downloaded her original PDFs, shared a "sweaty" selfie with her on Instagram and those who attended her park bootcamps.
Itsines will remain head trainer. Photo / Instagram@Kaylaitsines
"Thank you to our fantastic trainers and a huge thank you to our SWEAT members for inspiring me every day and for coming with me on this epic journey. I couldn't have done it without you."
Scott Watterson, CEO and founder of iFIT, said the company is "delighted" to welcome Itsine's authentic fitness training and charismatic personality – along with all of SWEAT's other star trainers – to the iFIT family.
"The addition of SWEAT will allow iFIT to further expand our membership base as well as add new fitness genres and modalities to our fast-growing subscription business, giving our company a tremendous competitive advantage," Watterson said in a statement.
Pearce told the Australian Financial Review he is "absolutely thrilled".
"There will be an investment made into our organisation to build a bigger and better SWEAT," he told the publication on Thursday.
The duo, who will remain in their existing roles, Pearce as chief executive and Itsines as head trainer, announced their separation in August last year.
The pair had been together for eight years and welcomed their daughter Arna Leia in May 2019.
"Our friendship remains strong as we parent Arna together and run SWEAT as business partners," they said in a statement in August 2020.
iFIT Health & Fitness, which own NordicTrack, also recently expanded its offerings in Australia with a subscription-based, interactive fitness technology that delivers live and on-demand studio classes as well as guided workouts across global destinations.
