For millions of runners and cyclists, Strava and Garmin are Mom and Dad. One provides the rugged, reliable hardware (the watch), and the other provides the community, the validation, and the social clout. For years, they’ve coexisted in a symbiotic, if sometimes tense, marriage.

But now, Mom and Dad are fighting. And as Strava, the $2.2B social darling, prepares to go public, their spat over logos and patents is threatening to become a very messy, and very public, divorce.

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For millions of runners, Strava and Garmin have been the ultimate fitness power couple — one logs the miles, the other logs the kudos.

So when a public spat erupted between them this fall, it felt like “Mom and Dad are fighting.”
And the timing? Awkward.

Strava’s CEO just confirmed plans to take the company public to fund “more and bigger acquisitions,” even as the beloved exercise-tracking app finds itself in a high-stakes tiff with its longtime partner-in-cardio, Garmin.

Strava is riding a wave of pandemic-era fitness enthusiasm.
The 16-year-old app — which turns workouts into social posts — has seen its user base explode to ~50 million monthly active users in 2025, nearly double Garmin’s.

Growth stats:

Unlike Nike or Adidas’s apps, Strava wins through community — giving kudos, comparing splits, and sharing the grind.

Premium ($11.99/mo or $79.99/yr) remains Strava’s core revenue driver, supplemented by brand partnerships and sponsored challenges.

Strava recently snapped up:

Both fix a long-standing weakness: custom training plans.

Martin, a former Nike exec, has doubled down on features that convert free users into paying subscribers — shifting growth from “get more users” to “make each user worth more.”

For years, Strava and Garmin were inseparable — Garmin tracked your data, Strava made it social.

Now, the two fitness titans are at war over logos, data, and control.

📍 The dispute:
Garmin’s new developer rules require Strava to show a Garmin logo on all workouts recorded with Garmin devices.
Strava called it “blatant advertising” that “degrades the user experience.”

Garmin’s ultimatum: comply by Nov 1 or lose data-sharing access.

Strava’s response? Sue them.
The company filed a patent-infringement lawsuit, accusing Garmin of copying its segments and heat maps and breaking a previous cooperation deal.

Runners online dubbed it “the divorce no one wanted.”

As Strava gears up for its IPO, it faces the classic dilemma:
Can it scale without losing its soul?

The app is now “more than mainstream,” as one running-club leader put it — “almost as important to running as shoes.”

But saturation looms. Future growth depends on:

If Strava can keep its runners, rivals, and investors in stride, its next finish line won’t be a marathon — it’ll be Wall Street.

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