Amazfit goes all in on HYROX. Hail Mary or smart investment?

On 15 April 2026, Amazfit signed a three-year exclusive global partnership with HYROX, expanding a regional deal from 2024. The licence fee was not disclosed, but the activation costs were, at least in part. For a loss-making company, the size of the commitment could be instrumental in its future success or otherwise.

This is an opinion piece supported by quotes from the Q1 2026 earnings call and by extensive, in-depth test data from several Hyrox watches used during Hyrox training on this site.

The deal

Amazfit becomes the exclusive smartwatch partner for HYROX events worldwide for three years. The exclusivity covers smart watches, smart rings, smart cameras, smart glasses, and smart straps. The licence prevents Meta, GoPro, and any other technical partner from entering the HYROX ecosystem in these categories for the duration of the licence.

The deal includes connected-app experiences, HYROX-specific training modes, performance data integrations, and access to the HYROX 365 training network of gyms and coaches.

Wang Huang told analysts on 8 June 2026: “This partnership represents more than a sponsorship. It is a strategic step for us to participate in and help shape the emerging hybrid training category.”

Disclosed activation costs were $1m in Q4 2025 (split with the Josh Kerr Olympic sponsorship) and $0.5m in Q1 2026 (split with CES presence). The licence fee itself was not disclosed in the partnership announcement or in either of the last two earnings calls.

The HYROX bet in context

HYROX had around 650,000 participants in the 2024/25 season across 74 events. Wang Huang cited a projected 1.3 million participants for 2025/26 across 100+ events. Independent reporting on annual HYROX revenue puts it between $110m and $140m in 2025. The sport is majority owned by Infront Sports.

The demographic skews younger and more female than the triathlon. Reported gender splits sit around 38%, women. The category recruits heavily from CrossFit, F45, Orangetheory, and the broader gym population.

What the exclusive licence actually buys

The fee buys three things.

1. The HYROX name in software, which competitors cannot use.
2. Marketing presence at HYROX events worldwide.
3. Access to the HYROX 365 training network of thousands of affiliated gyms.

The race itself uses timing chips. The watch on race day captures heart rate and elapsed time. Both functions are standard on the most basic sports watches, standard to the point of commoditisation.

PUMA’s parallel partnership covers apparel and footwear through 2030. PUMA’s CEO described HYROX as “one of our strategically most important partnerships.” PUMA had €8.6bn in revenue in 2024/2025. Zepp Health had $51.5m in Q1 2026 revenue, against a $19.6m net loss.

Where Coros and Garmin already match Amazfit

Coros shipped Hybrid Fitness mode in its Spring 2026 firmware update, with a PFT Test that replicates the official HYROX P’F”T workout. Garmin shipped improved HYROX support in its Q1 2026 software update and has an established Connect IQ ecosystem, with the Roxfit app for structured HYROX logging widely used and generally liked. Both now cover much of the same training workflow without official HYROX branding. Every major brand is doing the technical work. The exclusivity prevents competitors from using the HYROX label – that’s all. It has not and cannot prevent them from shipping HYROX-equivalent features.

The Apple-shaped gap

An Apple Watch SE can easily log heart rate for 90 minutes or run the Roxfit app.

HYROX occupies a segment where Apple has yet to establish category ownership. More than that, Apple hasn’t attempted to do so, nor will it. It’s too niche.

The Apple Watch dominates mainstream smartwatches. Garmin owns triathlon sports. HYROX sits uneasily between those worlds when you consider who is competing rather than what they are competing with on their wrist.

The complexity of triathlon, for those who want it, broadly maps onto HYROX, requiring structured training workflows, external sensor pairing, and workout-specific metrics that mainstream fitness tracking does not address out of the box. The opening for a specialist sports brand is wider in HYROX than in the general fitness or running markets. It’s wider because of the complexity.

To seize the opportunity, Amazfit has to dominate the complexity. Does it?

The technical reality of the watch

This site has tested the Cheetah 2 Ultra and other Amazfit watches in numerous HYROX simulations. Optical HR returned near-zero bias against the Garmin HRM600, Whoop MG, and Polar Verity SENSE. Amazfit watches support external chest straps for athletes who want race-day precision. Stryd integration is supported across the current Amazfit range for indoor pace and is widely validated beyond this site for precision in indoor arena running.

The obvious gaps are platform-wide, and the less obvious ones are a systemic problem across any brand. Any wrist sensor on the market cannot reliably log reps and weights – in a race, does it even need to? Muscular strain simply cannot be measured by optical HR. Many readiness systems rely heavily on cardiovascular metrics, which will miss some of the muscular fatigue HYROX-style training generates. Amazfit cannot solve these problems alone. Neither can anyone else at consumer price points.

External SMO2 sensors like Train Red and Moxy fill the gap in muscular load training for serious athletes. Both pair via standard protocols. Garmin’s Connect IQ ecosystem supports native data field integration for the sensors. Zepp OS supports developer apps but currently lacks a structured data-logging pipeline for muscle-oxygen graphs in the primary workout summary. Garmin currently offers the stronger route for athletes who want muscle-oxygen data within a broader training ecosystem. Even then, recognised sports scientists like Gem Arnold and Bruce Rogers will tell you that precise placement of muscle oxygen sensors day after day is required to get science-grade stats.

How well any sports watch handles ad-hoc gym training routines or custom plan execution, monitoring, and compliance is a separate question. Even seemingly trivial watch features, like the ability to undo a button press that incorrectly moved you to the next workout step, become important if your goal is ‘perfect data’. Many athletes end up logging their heart rate and attending an instructor-led Hyrox class simply because it’s easier. Where does a complex sports watch purchase fit in there?

The commercial maths

Because the licence fee remains undisclosed, any estimate is necessarily speculative. If annual rights costs landed in the low single-digit millions of dollars, the required incremental watch sales would still be substantial. The disclosed activation spend already runs to around $2m per year before the licence itself.

At an Amazfit gross margin of 37.7% and a blended average selling price near $450 across the mid-to-high-end performance segment (Cheetah, Falcon, T-Rex, Balance), Amazfit needs to sell somewhere between 60,000 and 120,000 incremental performance watches over three years that it would not otherwise have sold. Against a target market growing toward 3 million HYROX athletes by 2028, which requires 2%-4% market penetration. Do-able?

PUMA can plausibly hit 5%-10% in HYROX apparel. PUMA owns the title sponsorship, supplies official footwear, and has a century of brand equity in sport. Amazfit is competing against Garmin, Coros, Apple, and Whoop in a category where buyers already own watches and switching costs are real.

The triathlon parallel

Garmin dominates serious triathlon tech buyers. The reason is execution. Ecosystem links, multisport profiles, brick workouts, transition handling, custom segments, and the ability to undo that annoying and incorrectly pressed last lap are genuinely hard to build. Every brand has tried. Most have failed. It’s too complicated, and the market incumbent is already too well-established.

HYROX is structurally comparable. Eight one-kilometre runs interspersed with eight varied workout stations. Each station would ideally deliver accurate logging under intensity. Transitions between stations have to be clean. Pacing data must survive in an indoor environment where GPS does not work.

It is one of the few formats where watch execution is hard enough to create a real product moat. To record it all ‘properly’ is extremely difficult. Much more so than triathlon.

Serious triathlon is also ageing. The under-30 demographic treats triathlon as a tick-box rather than a lifestyle. HYROX appears significantly earlier in that cycle by perhaps a decade and may remain a lifestyle choice for at least a subsequent decade, supported by the youth strength-training movement, the inclusion of women, and gym-based accessibility.

Verdict

Strategically, the bet is sound. There was no comparable bet on offer. HYROX is among the fastest-growing mass-participation fitness sports; its demographic is younger and more diverse than triathlon, and the watch execution is hard enough to create a product moat if Amazfit invests in it.

Commercially, the bet is harder. The licence fee is undisclosed, activation costs are visible, and the break-even watch volume falls within a range that a loss-making company has to take seriously. A 2-4% market-penetration target against Garmin, Coros, Apple, and Whoop is plausible but not easy to achieve.

The Hail Mary framing is partly fair. A company posting a $19.6m quarterly net loss is making a multi-million dollar commitment to a single category.

Sources

• HYROX and Amazfit three-year global partnership announcement
• Zepp Health Q1 2026 earnings release
• PUMA HYROX partnership extension to 2030
• HYROX official site

Related coverage on this site

• HYROX sports tech hub
• Zepp Health Q1 2026 earnings analysis
• Amazfit price rises: are they getting too expensive?
• Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra HR accuracy in HYROX simulation
• Amazfit Balance 3 and Ultra vs Balance 2

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Amazfit the only HYROX wearables partner?

Yes. The 15 April 2026 deal grants Amazfit exclusive smart wearables partner status across HYROX events worldwide for three years. The exclusivity covers smart watches, smart rings, smart cameras, smart glasses, and smart straps. No competing wearable brand can enter the HYROX ecosystem in those categories for the duration of the deal.

Can Garmin and Coros still build HYROX features?

Yes. The exclusivity covers the HYROX name and event partnership, not the underlying training format. Coros has shipped Hybrid Fitness mode and a PFT Test that replicates the official HYROX P’F”T workout. Garmin has shipped improved HYROX support and supports the Roxfit app through Connect IQ for structured logging. Both cover much of the same training workflow without using the HYROX brand.

How much did Amazfit pay for the HYROX deal?

The licence fee was not disclosed. Activation costs of around $1m in Q4 2025 and $0.5m in Q1 2026 were mentioned on earnings calls. The licence fee itself sits on top of those costs and is the larger figure.

Which Amazfit watches have HYROX features?

HYROX Race Mode is available on the Active Max, Active 3 Premium, Balance 3, Balance Ultra, Cheetah Pro, Cheetah 2 Pro, Cheetah 2 Ultra, T-Rex Ultra and T-Rex Ultra 2. The mode supports Single, Double, and Team Relay workouts across the eight HYROX disciplines.

Is the Amazfit watch accurate for HYROX training?

In testing on this site, the Cheetah 2 Ultra returned near-zero bias against the Garmin HRM600, Whoop MG, and Polar Verity SENSE across a full HYROX simulation. Wrist-based optical heart rate has known limitations during high-intensity, grip-heavy work. A Bluetooth chest strap pairs with any modern Amazfit watch, removing the limitation for race-day use.

Can the watch track reps and weights during HYROX stations?

Not reliably. No wrist-based wearable on the market handles automatic rep counting and weight logging across HYROX stations under race conditions. Reps and weights must be logged manually unless you are following a structured plan with preloaded targets. This is a platform-wide limitation, not specific to Amazfit.

Does the watch measure muscular fatigue from HYROX training?

No consumer wearable on the market measures muscular strain directly. Readiness scores, including HybridCharge, Garmin Body Battery, and Whoop Recovery, are built primarily on cardiovascular and HRV data. They can miss some of the muscular fatigue HYROX-style training generates. External muscle oxygen sensors from Train.Red and Moxy fill the gap but require third-party integration.

What is HYROX 365?

The HYROX 365 training network is the global community of accredited HYROX Training Clubs and certified coaches. Athletes can train at an affiliated gym year-round using HYROX-specific programming, not just at race events. Amazfit’s deal includes access to this network as part of the broader ecosystem integration.

How big is HYROX?

HYROX had around 650,000 participants across 74 events in the 2024/25 season. Projected participation for 2025/26 is 1.3 million across 100+ events. Annual revenue for HYROX itself is estimated between $110m and $140m. The sport is majority owned by Infront Sports.

Is HYROX a sustainable bet for Amazfit?

Strategically yes. The category is growing fast, the demographic is younger and more female than triathlon, and watch execution is technically hard enough to create a product moat. Commercially, the bet is harder. Amazfit needs to sell 60,000 to 120,000 incremental performance watches over three years to break even on a multi-million dollar commitment, which requires 2% to 4% market penetration in the HYROX athlete segment.

Last Updated on 9 June 2026 by the5krunner

the5krunner

tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID