ProntoBev still has a website. The company still describes its flagship product as a “30-Second Wine Chiller.” But there is a problem with the story that followed its 2017 appearance on Shark Tank: there is still no clear evidence that ProntoBev became a commercially available product at scale.
That makes the company’s current status more complicated than the usual “Shark Tank success” or “Shark Tank failure” label.
The original pitch was straightforward. Alexander Simone, founder of Pronto Concepts, wanted $100,000 for 5% of the company, putting a $2 million valuation on a business that had not yet generated sales. The prototype was designed to chill wine by about 20°F in 30 seconds, using a temperature-regulating gel inside the device. (sharktankblog.com)
The pitch ended with a deal. Mark Cuban offered $100,000 for 25%, provided Simone could raise another $100,000. Simone accepted.
The more consequential part came afterward.
ProntoBev entered Shark Tank with a prototype and about $60,000 in crowdfunding
Simone's ProntoBev idea dates back to 2013, when he tried to rapidly chill a bottle of Chardonnay with ice and salt. The wine became cold but, by his account, also watery and salty. He returned to the concept in 2015 and eventually developed a working prototype. Pronto Concepts says it went through 13 prototypes before arriving at the version shown publicly. (prontoconcepts.com)
By 2017, the company had something more substantial than an idea but less than a conventional consumer-products business.
ProntoBev had run an Indiegogo campaign that the company's own website says reached 216% funding in September 2017. Pronto Concepts describes the campaign as having raised more than $60,000. A later Shark Tank recap gives the total as $61,317. (prontoconcepts.com)
That money was supposed to help move the product from prototype toward production.
The economics presented to the Sharks were attractive on paper. Simone said a unit cost about $22 to manufacture. He had offered early Indiegogo supporters the product for $89 and planned a retail price of roughly $129. (sharktankblog.com)
But the company was still pre-revenue when Simone walked into the Tank.
That distinction mattered. The Sharks were not evaluating an established product line with proven sales. They were evaluating whether the prototype could actually become one.
Mark Cuban offered $100,000 for 25%, but with a condition
The Sharks were skeptical of the $2 million valuation.
Daymond John, Mark Cuban and Robert Herjavec all declined to invest. Kevin O'Leary offered $100,000 for 50%, which Simone rejected. Then Cuban returned with a different proposal: $100,000 for 25%, contingent on Simone raising another $100,000. Simone accepted the deal on camera. (statepress.com)
The condition is important because it is often lost in simplified summaries of the episode.
This was not simply “Mark Cuban invested $100,000.”
The agreement shown on television required Simone to raise another $100,000. An Arizona State University profile published shortly after the episode described Simone as actively seeking that additional money and said the company was raising a seed round. (wpcarey.asu.edu)
At the time, Simone was optimistic. In a December 2017 interview with his fraternity's publication, he said his goal was to raise the additional $100,000 and described having Cuban involved as potentially valuable for getting production ready. (aepi.org)
That expected next step is where the ProntoBev story starts to diverge from the usual Shark Tank success narrative.
The Mark Cuban deal is not supported by what happened afterward
Pronto Concepts later made its own claim about the Cuban condition. Its website has stated that the company had “far exceeded Mark Cuban's contingency” and was offering additional shares to investors.
But that claim does not establish that Cuban's investment actually closed.
Contemporary and later reporting found Pronto Concepts absent from Mark Cuban Companies' public portfolio information. More importantly, the company continued to struggle with the basic problem the Shark investment was supposed to solve: getting ProntoBev into customers' hands. (foodrepublic.com)
So the safest description is not that Cuban definitely invested and the company subsequently failed. It is that Cuban made the conditional offer on the show, Simone accepted it, and there is no reliable evidence that the investment ultimately closed.
That distinction matters because many Shark Tank update pages simply repeat the televised deal as though the money changed hands.
The available evidence points the other way.
ProntoBev's Indiegogo campaign became the bigger problem
The original crowdfunding campaign is where the company's post-Shark Tank problems become much harder to explain away as ordinary startup delays.
Indiegogo backers had paid for ProntoBev units, with some of the campaign's reward levels promising multiple devices. Yet production and fulfillment repeatedly failed to reach the finish line.
The campaign's last substantive company update came in July 2020, according to later reporting. The company said it was making minor adjustments to the product, including changes intended to improve how components fit together. (foodrepublic.com)
After that, the public record became increasingly dominated by backer complaints.
Food Republic reported that comments continued appearing on the campaign through 2023, with backers asking where their products were and requesting refunds. The publication also reported that Indiegogo had suspended the campaign and marked it as under review. (foodrepublic.com)
Those are allegations and customer complaints, not proof of criminal wrongdoing. Some frustrated backers went further, describing the company as a scam. Those accusations should be attributed to the people making them rather than presented as an established fact.
What is established is simpler: customers paid through the crowdfunding campaign, and years later there were public complaints about non-delivery and refunds.
The ProntoBev website is still online, but that does not mean the business is operating normally
This is where current searches can produce misleading results.
As of August 2026, the Pronto Concepts website is still accessible. It still promotes ProntoBev and describes the device as capable of dropping an average bottle's temperature by 20°F in 30 seconds. It also continues to advertise ProntoAer, a wine aerator. (prontoconcepts.com)
The site therefore provides evidence that the brand and its product pages have not simply vanished.
But the site does not provide equally strong evidence of a functioning consumer business.
The current ProntoBev page is essentially a product presentation. It explains the technology, the claimed performance and how the device is supposed to work. It does not provide a normal, functioning retail path that demonstrates current commercial availability. That is consistent with earlier reporting, which found no practical way for consumers to buy the product. (prontoconcepts.com)
There is also an interesting wrinkle in the intellectual-property record. A U.S. patent application covering a temperature-regulating apparatus filed by Pronto Concepts was abandoned, while a later U.S. patent covering a beverage temperature-regulating apparatus lists Alexander Simone as inventor and Pronto Concepts as the original assignee and is currently listed as active. (patents.google.com)
So it would be inaccurate to say there is no surviving intellectual property around the invention.
It would be equally inaccurate to use that patent as evidence that ProntoBev became a successful commercial product.
Alexander Simone appears to have moved on from ProntoBev
The founder's professional history provides another clue about what happened.
Public professional information shows Simone working as Product Director at makeXnow from October 2021 through November 2023, after his listed period at Pronto Concepts. More recent public profiles associate him with other product-development work rather than presenting ProntoBev as an active consumer brand. (contactout.com)
That does not prove that Pronto Concepts was legally dissolved or that Simone abandoned every interest in the intellectual property.
It does show that ProntoBev stopped looking like the main operating business it was supposed to become after Shark Tank.
And that is the most defensible answer to the question “Whatever happened to ProntoBev?”
So, is ProntoBev still in business?
The evidence does not support calling ProntoBev a thriving active business in 2026.
Nor is “defunct” as cleanly verifiable as some newer Shark Tank update sites claim.
The official Pronto Concepts website remains live and continues to describe the product. The company has surviving intellectual-property records, including an active U.S. patent associated with the beverage temperature-regulating invention. (prontoconcepts.com)
But there is no convincing evidence of a normal retail operation, sustained product sales or successful fulfillment of the original crowdfunding orders. Public reporting documented years of unresolved backer complaints, while the founder subsequently moved into other product-development work. (sharktankblog.com)
The Mark Cuban deal should also be treated as an on-air conditional deal, not a confirmed completed investment.
That leaves ProntoBev in an unusual place. The product concept did not disappear. The website did not disappear. The intellectual property did not disappear. What seems to have disappeared is the commercial momentum needed to turn a clever prototype, a successful crowdfunding campaign and a nationally televised Shark Tank deal into a functioning consumer product company.
For a device that promised to make wine cold in 30 seconds, ProntoBev's own timeline turned out to be considerably longer.
