PNOĒ 2.0 Moves Metabolic Breath Testing Out of the Lab

PNOĒ will launch PNOĒ 2.0 on October 1, a breath-testing mask designed for self-administration without a trained operator. The company is based in Malden, Massachusetts, with operations in Athens, Greece, and its current device requires a trained operator TechCrunch. Its co-founder and CEO is Apostolos Atsalakis.

The protocol is brief. The user wears the mask and breathes for eight minutes. No operator is required. The system measures oxygen consumed and carbon dioxide exhaled to assess metabolism. PNOĒ says that measurement captures 23 biomarkers.

The outputs will be familiar to anyone who follows fitness data. The test measures VO2 max, resting metabolic rate and metabolic flexibility. VO2 max is the top rate at which the body can use oxygen in hard exercise, a standard measure of aerobic fitness. Resting metabolic rate is the energy burned at rest. Metabolic flexibility is the ability to shift between carbohydrate and fat as fuel, like a hybrid engine switching power sources. These categories have historically required supervised testing with calibrated gas analysis.

The hardware has been reworked for unsupervised use. The new device is smaller and more compact than its predecessor and has fewer parts. It was designed with Milan-based Design Group Italia. The electronics detach from the silicone mask and straps. That allows multiple people to share the hardware while using individual masks.

The device is not cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration TechCrunch. Without clearance, it sits in the wellness, fitness and performance category rather than in regulated diagnostics.

PNOĒ describes a wider software stack around the test. The company says its metabolic breath test takes less than 10 minutes and that analysis is instant and requires no lab work or blood draw PNOĒ. It says its AI-driven engine merges breath analysis results with data from wearables, blood tests and body scans to generate a health snapshot. Its Biometric Dashboard, the company says, unifies wearables, labs and breath testing into a real-time view of 225-plus biomarkers. For commercial buyers, PNOĒ advertises an offer to add PNOĒ to a business with 0 down, 0 percent interest and 3-month deferral.

For comparison, a laboratory VO2 max test involves exercising on a treadmill or cycle ergometer while wearing a sealed mask connected to a stationary metabolic cart PNOĒ. A mouthpiece with nose clip can serve as an alternative to a sealed mask. Those setups are accurate but staff intensive. They need space, calibration and supervision.

In my view, the consequential change here is not a new biomarker. It is the removal of labor from the measurement loop. Supervised testing has kept metabolic testing concentrated in labs, clinics and high-end training facilities. A self-serve eight-minute protocol with detachable, shareable electronics lowers the staffing and hygiene barriers in gyms and studios. Fewer parts mean fewer failure modes. Detachable electronics mean faster turnover between users.

Worth flagging for technical buyers is what still needs validation in the field. Self-administration shifts error sources from operator technique to mask seal, breathing compliance and motion artifact. The claim of 23 biomarkers from breath gas, plus integration of wearables, blood tests and body scans into a 225-plus marker dashboard, will need careful parsing. Those data types have different sampling rates, error bounds and drift characteristics. Merging them into a single snapshot is a data fusion problem as much as a sensor problem.

The broader context here is what frequent measurement would allow if that integration holds up in routine use. Resting metabolic rate and metabolic flexibility could become longitudinal variables rather than one-time lab values. That would give coaches, clinicians and technically literate users a tighter feedback loop for training, nutrition and recovery programming without added lab visits or blood draws.