About
Skip is building movewear, a new category of powered garments that make everyday movement easier, more comfortable, and more joyful.
Our first product, MO/GO, is a lightweight, powered wearable that provides support and boost to the legs. Think of it like an e-bike for walking: it helps reduce fatigue, support the joints, and assist people in going farther or climbing higher — without paying for it the next day. Whether you’re hiking with friends, traveling through hilly cities, gardening, or simply climbing the stairs at home, MO/GO helps unlock that “last 20%” of movement that can otherwise feel too hard.
Skip is focused on helping people stay active and independent as they age. We’re building consumer-first products that are sleek, comfortable, and intuitive to use. Unlike traditional exoskeletons designed for medical or military use, MO/GO is lightweight, soft-structured, and designed for people who want to keep doing what they love — even when their body starts to slow down.
The company spun out of Google X in 2023 after five years of R&D, with deep expertise in AI, machine learning, and robotics. Since then, we’ve grown to a team of world-class engineers, designers, and storytellers, backed by strong Series A funding and a long-term investment runway through manufacturing.
We joined the AgeTech Collaborative to connect with aligned partners, run consumer research, and continue refining our approach through feedback from people who would benefit most from our technology. We’re excited to be part of a growing movement that believes aging can be active, joyful, and free.
Our vision is simple: to create a world where no one is left behind — and everyone has the power to keep going.
Founders Bio
Kathryn Zealand is the Founder and CEO of Skip, the first “e-bike for walking”: an ultralight exoskeleton that could be a beautiful, intuitive and transformative product to help a billion people be more active and healthy. Kathryn has a background in theoretical physics, invented numerous patents and previously led early stage projects at Google X, before developing the underlying tech for what eventually spun out into the startup Skip.
Anna Roumiantseva has spent her career in product leadership - helping teams deeply understand complex problems and design differentiated solutions around them. She has worked at some of the top product design agencies, including IDEO and Idea Couture (leading their Bay Area practice), helping clients design and launch category-defining products. She also led Product for several teams at Google X, including other wearable tech projects, before co-founding Skip. Anna is a systems thinker inspired by solving big problems for real people in a no-nonsense way that makes the world better.
Origin Story
Anna and I both have a deep personal connection to mobility. For me it was my granny who used to walk everywhere. She’d walk to the shops, walk to the cafe, walk to church, to bridge club, to flower-arranging club and all the adorable things that grannys do. Until, one day, she couldn’t anymore. Her whole world started getting smaller that day. This is a very common story, but until I’d seen it happen to someone I loved, I hadn’t appreciated how much being able to confidently move around your community is critical to your overall quality of life.
At that time, I worked with some of the smartest technologists in the world, yet for all our progress, I couldn’t find anything that I could picture someone like granny wearing and using on a regular basis. And the more I learnt about movement, the more you see how many people struggle with it, ranging from old sports injuries, to long covid, to neuromuscular conditions.
I actually didn’t want robotics to be the answer. Robots will always be more complicated and expensive than alternate solutions, but years of user research told us that people wanted a product that’s hands-free (thus wearable) and actively helps with the movements that folks found most difficult, which are often knee-heavy (e.g. stairs, hills, standing out of a chair).
We experimented with lots of ideas and ultimately converged on movewear as a new category of products that actively power movement, but are as comfortable and intuitive to wear as clothing. We’re starting with knee support for hiking, but are also in research trials for a variety of more medical movement challenges.
Naming the company Skip is a nod not just to our desire to help people move with ease but to have that movement unlock all kinds of joyful experiences for them… after all, what’s more joyful than a Skip? ;-)
Product Overview
Honors and Awards