Berglund was a physicist partly based at CERN, collaborating with the team who discovered the Higgs boson, before co-founding the company with her husband Scherwitzl.
Because the couple was in search of an alternative natural contraceptive themselves, Berglund used data analysis to develop an algorithm designed to pinpoint her ovulation.
[3] In November 2017 Natural Cycles received a $30M investment in series B round led by EQT Ventures fund, with participation from existing investors Sunstone, E-ventures and Bonnier Growth Media (the VC arm of privately held Swedish media group, the Bonnier Group).
[17] In August 2018, Lauren Streicher, professor of clinical obstetrics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine expressed concerns over the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the app.
Streicher has claimed that the app is "problematic" as it relies on users' self-reported temperatures which must be taken as soon as they wake up each morning in order to be accurate.
In July 2018 researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published a study which claimed "Natural Cycles' marketing materials ought to be entirely transparent, more clear than they currently are about the limitations of their app and pregnancy risks".