Community Discussions
Calibre Bio Bankruptcy: What It Means — and Why Garmin Should Pay Attention
The bankruptcy of Calibre Bio is more than just a company going under — it has very real implications for users.
Their devices rely heavily on remote servers to store the spirometry data (portal.calibrebio.com). If those servers go offline, sessions won’t sync, historical data may become inaccessible (exports are processed on their servers), and the core functionality of the device could stop to work entirely.
If you’re a customer (like me), it’s worth acting quickly: export any data you can, save reports/screenshots, and keep an eye on whether parts of the system can run locally. Once backend infrastructure is discontinued, recovery will probably impossible.
Strategically, this situation highlights a bigger gap in the wearables market. Companies like Garmin still rely mostly on estimated VO₂max based on heart rate and activity patterns. These estimates can be useful, but they’re often off - especially outside steady-state conditions.
Calibre’s approach was fundamentally different and I really liked it for optimizing my health and training: innovative device, real spirometry data, measuring actual oxygen consumption and metabolic response instead of inferring it. That’s a completely different level of accuracy and opens the door to much better training and health guidance (e.g. real fat oxidation vs. carb usage).
This is why the current situation feels like a missed opportunity. If a company like Garmin stepped in, they wouldn’t just acquire a product—they’d gain access to real metabolic measurement and could significantly upgrade their entire performance stack.
Right now, though, the immediate reality is simpler: if the servers go dark, the ecosystem likely goes with them.
From a technical angle and as a happy Calibre Bio user: the device communicates via Bluetooth, it might be possible to reverse engineer the protocol and build a community-driven app. That would at least preserve basic functionality and access to raw spirometry data. Of course, this depends on how locked down the communication is, but it wouldn’t be the first time a stranded device gets a second life this way.
The bankruptcy of Calibre Bio is more than just a company going under — it has very real implications for users.
Their devices rely heavily on remote servers to store the spirometry data (portal.calibrebio.com). If those servers go offline, sessions won’t sync, historical data may become inaccessible (exports are processed on their servers), and the core functionality of the device could stop to work entirely.
If you’re a customer (like me), it’s worth acting quickly: export any data you can, save reports/screenshots, and keep an eye on whether parts of the system can run locally. Once backend infrastructure is discontinued, recovery will probably impossible.
Strategically, this situation highlights a bigger gap in the wearables market. Companies like Garmin still rely mostly on estimated VO₂max based on heart rate and activity patterns. These estimates can be useful, but they’re often off - especially outside steady-state conditions.
Calibre’s approach was fundamentally different and I really liked it for optimizing my health and training: innovative device, real spirometry data, measuring actual oxygen consumption and metabolic response instead of inferring it. That’s a completely different level of accuracy and opens the door to much better training and health guidance (e.g. real fat oxidation vs. carb usage).
This is why the current situation feels like a missed opportunity. If a company like Garmin stepped in, they wouldn’t just acquire a product—they’d gain access to real metabolic measurement and could significantly upgrade their entire performance stack.
Right now, though, the immediate reality is simpler: if the servers go dark, the ecosystem likely goes with them.
From a technical angle and as a happy Calibre Bio user: the device communicates via Bluetooth, it might be possible to reverse engineer the protocol and build a community-driven app. That would at least preserve basic functionality and access to raw spirometry data. Of course, this depends on how locked down the communication is, but it wouldn’t be the first time a stranded device gets a second life this way.
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