The headline number is hard to ignore: $50.58 billion. That is the projected size of the global sextech market in 2026 — up from $43.82 billion just twelve months ago. Growth at that scale, sustained over several years running, has started doing something unusual for this particular industry: attracting proper institutional money.
Venture capital has historically treated sextech the way polite company handles awkward topics — acknowledged it exists, then moved on. That dynamic is changing. In 2023 alone, more than 140 AI-enhanced sextech startups received funding globally. Analysts project the sector will reach $240 billion by 2035, a fivefold increase in under a decade. Numbers like that have a way of overriding prior reluctance rather quickly.
Why now?
The timing has a specific explanation. The category has successfully repositioned itself as health technology. Sexual wellness — once filed alongside personal care products in a separate, lower-status column — now sits inside a broader conversation about mental health, relationship quality, and physical self-care. That repositioning made sextech legible to investors who would have declined a meeting two years ago.
It is not purely a marketing exercise. Research published alongside recent market reports points to measurable wellbeing outcomes: approximately 62% of users of AI-powered intimate devices report improved emotional connectivity and mental wellbeing. Those are figures that now appear in the kinds of white papers that inform healthcare commissioning and investment theses alike. The category is being taken seriously in rooms where it was not previously on the agenda.
There is also a generational driver. Gen Z has redefined sexual wellness as an essential component of overall health rather than a separate, private matter — and they are entering their peak spending years. Where consumer behaviour leads at scale, investment follows. For deeper context on the technologies behind this shift, our guide to sexual wellness innovations explains the specific mechanisms driving the hardware evolution.
What AI actually does inside an intimate device
Not every product wearing the "AI" badge deserves it. There is a meaningful difference between adaptive feedback technology — systems that learn individual preferences across sessions and adjust stimulus patterns accordingly — and Bluetooth connectivity rebranded for a pitch deck. Both exist in today's market. Only one represents what the serious investment community is actually funding.
The genuine applications are specific: biometric adaptive intensity that responds to physiological signals in real time, voice-activated controls, real-time bidirectional sync between two devices across any distance, and — at the more experimental end — conversational AI companions integrated with physical hardware. Lovense, one of the sector's largest and most established manufacturers, debuted an AI companion product at CES 2026 and has since begun integrating an open-source AI agent to enable voice-controlled device interaction. These are commercial products with supply chains and customer support teams behind them, not research prototypes.
As of 2024, over 37% of adult tech products include some form of AI-driven feature — voice recognition, adaptive feedback loops, or virtual companion functionality. AI-integrated devices are projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 21.56% through 2035, making them the fastest-growing subcategory in the entire sextech sector by a significant margin.
What this means in the UK
The UK sextech market is projected to grow from $12.5 billion in 2025 to $32.4 billion by 2031 — a CAGR of 16.8%. That growth is being driven by two convergent forces: rising awareness of sexual wellness as a genuine component of physical and mental health, and a generational shift in how people talk about pleasure and self-care without either embarrassment or the need for justification.
The practical consequence is already visible on shelves. The app-controlled toys category has moved from a premium niche with a handful of expensive, early-adopter devices to a mainstream segment with products at multiple accessible price points. Real-time interactive sync — technology that allows two partners to feel each other's device input simultaneously regardless of physical distance — is available today at under £100. Brands at the category's forefront, including Svakom and We-Vibe, are available in our couples toys range, with the Svakom Phoenix Neo 2 and We-Vibe Sync Go representing exactly the kind of connected, adaptive hardware that is drawing investment attention.
The legitimisation effect
There is a less obvious consequence of serious money entering a historically stigmatised industry: it changes how comfortable ordinary people feel about buying something. When sextech appears in mainstream investment reports, sits alongside healthtech and femtech in VC portfolios, and gets covered by the same publications that cover fintech, the purchase decision carries less social weight.
That shift matters more than the product improvements. Hesitation — not awareness, not price — has historically been the main barrier to market growth in this category. Institutional legitimacy dissolves hesitation in a way that even excellent product design cannot. The same pattern played out in cannabis wellness, CBD, and a generation before that, hormonal contraception. The science leads, the money follows, and public perception eventually catches up.
The next five years
The products at the leading edge of the current investment cycle are already in prototype or early commercial stages: AI companions with genuine conversational intelligence, devices that integrate with wearable biometric sensors to create fully personalised feedback loops, and haptic technologies capable of replicating physical sensation with considerably greater nuance than current vibration patterns allow.
None of this is science fiction. It is funded research with product roadmaps and distribution timelines. The $50.58 billion figure for 2026 is a snapshot of a category in the early stages of a genuinely large transformation — one that has reach-through effects on the quality and intelligence of what is available today, and what will be available next year.
If you want to explore what is already leading the category in the UK, our app-controlled range and remote-controlled toys are the right places to start. Free delivery on all orders over £50.
