Fi Just Boxed Itself Into a Two-Way Pet GPS Race in Europe

The U.S.-native side of the pet GPS category just declared its international intentions. Fi added nine European markets and a 38-country footprint on June 2, three weeks after Bending Spoons closed its acquisition of Tractive in a deal valued in the high hundreds of millions of euros. The wearables land grab is now timed.

Fi pushes into 9 new European markets, hits 38-country footprint

Fi, the Brooklyn-based connected pet collar maker operating as Barking Labs, announced June 2 that its devices are now available for direct purchase in 29 countries and operate via international connectivity in 9 additional markets, for a total reach of 38 countries.

The newly added paid markets are Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, and Latvia. Coverage extends through Fi's connectivity network into Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland, and Turkey, where customers traveling with their pets can use the collar without a separate local purchase.

The expansion builds on Fi's March 2026 UK and EU launch, which was the company's first move outside North America. Fi's product stack includes GPS tracking, AI-powered health insights branded as Fi Intelligence, and real-time safety alerts on a single subscription-tied collar. The most recent product, Fi Mini, launched in August 2025 to target smaller dogs and cats.

Fi has raised roughly $41 million in disclosed funding since founding, with a $30 million Series B in February 2021 led by Longview Asset Management's Chuck Murphy. The company has not announced subsequent rounds, though intelligence360 reporting flagged a $7 million capital raise filing in a more recent unspecified round. The capital base puts Fi well behind Tractive on revenue, subscribers, and disclosed financial firepower.

The same week Fi announced its 38-country footprint, Whisker launched the Litter-Robot 5, EVO, and LitterHopper 5 in Canada — the first international rollout of Whisker's newest hardware generation. Two of the most recognizable U.S.-native connected pet hardware brands chose the same week to go international.

Why the wearables land grab just got time-sensitive

The headline isn't the country count. It's the timing.

Bending Spoons, the Italian software roll-up firm best known for acquiring Eventbrite for $500 million and AOL earlier in 2026, closed its acquisition of Tractive on May 15, 2026, with the deal reportedly valued in the high three-digit millions of euros. Tractive surpassed €100 million in annual recurring revenue in 2024, serves over 1.4 million active users, and has more than 900,000 paying subscribers worldwide. That's the company Fi is now expanding directly against in Tractive's home European market.

Three forces define the next 18 months in this category.

The subscription-tied hardware playbook is the bottleneck. Both Fi and Tractive sell hardware at near-breakeven and earn the unit economics on monthly cellular and software fees. International expansion is fundamentally a subscriber-acquisition expansion. Every paid market Fi adds to its 29-country list is a new cohort that has to be acquired against an incumbent already there. Tractive's home-field advantage in DACH, the Nordics, and the Benelux is a decade of brand and distribution. Fi is now spending S&M dollars to break through that, not just to introduce the product.

Bending Spoons changes the competitive cost structure on the other side. Bending Spoons' M&A thesis is built on acquiring mature consumer-software businesses, cutting back-office cost, raising prices selectively, and reinvesting in growth marketing. Tractive under Bending Spoons will not be a sleepy European founder-led business. It will be a price-optimized subscription machine with a much larger marketing budget than it had pre-deal. Fi entered Europe just before that operating posture took hold.

Life360's pet entrant is the wild card. Life360 launched a pet GPS tracker tapping its 88 million-user family-safety base in late 2025. Life360's distribution advantage is the only thing in the category bigger than Tractive's brand. The U.S. consumer-tracker fight is now three-way: Fi on premium hardware and AI health insights, Tractive on global subscriber base and ARR scale, Life360 on family-account cross-sell. The European fight is being defined now.

The market context is the pet wearables forecast we covered May 28: $3.37 billion in 2025 to $11.40 billion by 2033, a 16.8% CAGR if it holds. North America is the largest region today. Europe is the second. APAC is the fastest-growing. Fi's expansion captures the right segment of the right geography at the right moment in the curve.

The questions Fi's release does not answer are the operator-relevant ones. Disclosed subscriber count remains zero. Subscription churn remains zero. Average revenue per device, the metric that decides whether the model compounds, remains zero. We know Fi sells a $19/month plan in the U.S. We do not know the European pricing structure, whether the connectivity-only markets convert to paid at material rates, or whether the company is funded for a sustained marketing push against Tractive's now-recapitalized parent.

What the expansion does telegraph, even without disclosure: Fi is signaling to existing and prospective investors that it has the geographic surface area of a global brand, not a U.S. niche. That positioning matters for a future round, a strategic, or an exit. The 38-country headline is as much for the cap table as for the customer.

The pet hardware sector in the U.S. is sending a synchronized signal. Whisker is going international with its newest generation from the start. Fi is racing to plant flags before the Tractive-Bending Spoons engine fully turns on. Halo Collar — which just closed its own GPS accuracy gap with the Collar 5 — and Petivity and PetSafe will face the same decision by the end of 2026. The U.S. premium pet-tech category is no longer a U.S.-only thesis.

Whose move comes next in pet GPS

Tractive's first post-close announcement: Bending Spoons does not sit on acquisitions. Watch for a Tractive product, pricing, or geographic expansion announcement in the next 60 to 90 days that signals the new operating posture. If Tractive pushes harder into the U.S., the European fight extends into Fi's home market.

Fi's next funding round or financial disclosure: The expansion thesis only works if Fi has the marketing capital to fight Tractive in nine new countries. Watch for a Series C announcement, a strategic investor, or an unusual disclosure of subscriber metrics. Any of those would confirm the international push is funded.

Life360 pet tracker traction signals: Life360 reports the pet tracker as part of its consolidated subscriber base. If the company breaks pet out as a disclosure line on the next quarterly call, that's the signal that the cross-sell is working and the three-way race has a serious third entrant.

Vet and insurance channel moves: The category compounds when the device gets recommended by a vet or subsidized by an insurer. Watch for Fi to announce a partnership with a U.S. or European insurer (Pets Best, Trupanion, Bought By Many, Petplan in the UK) or with a corporate veterinary group. That's the unlock that turns a consumer-electronics category into a healthcare category.

Halo Collar's response: Halo is the most direct U.S. competitor to Fi on the premium-hardware-and-subscription model. If Halo announces an international rollout in Q3, the category has fully repriced. If it doesn't, Fi has bought itself first-mover space in the European premium tier.

The category isn't being decided on product. It's being decided on geography, distribution, and subscriber retention. Fi just made its geography move. The next three play out in public over the back half of 2026.

Source: Fi via Business Wire