The smart ring that turned sleep tracking into a $1B+ health business
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States (founded in Oulu, Finland) | Founded: 2013 | Employees: Not disclosed in reviewed sources | Stage: Private; $11B Series E (October 2025); S-1 filed September 2026 and IPO pulled 29 September 2026; ~$1.21B revenue in nine months to June 2026 | Website: https://ouraring.com
Oura Health was founded in 2013 in Oulu, Finland by Petteri Lahtela, Kari Kivelä and Markku Koskela, with the idea that a ring-sized sensor could read the body's signals more comfortably and accurately than a wrist device. The first rings shipped in 2015 and found an early audience among sleep researchers, athletes and quantified-self enthusiasts. Its core insight was simple: readiness matters as much as activity, so the product leads with sleep and recovery rather than step counts. The company is now headquartered in San Francisco with engineering roots in Finland, and is led by CEO Tom Hale, who joined in 2021.
The product is a titanium ring with 18 light paths, dual temperature sensors and motion sensors that stream data over Bluetooth to an app. Members get three daily scores (Sleep, Readiness, Activity), automatic detection of 40+ activities, 250 Hz sampling during sleep for stage analysis, and features that have broadened well beyond sleep: Cumulative Stress, 12-month Cycle Insights for women's health, GLP-1 medication insights, live activity tracking, and Health Radar, which surfaces blood-pressure signals and nighttime breathing changes. Oura Advisor, an AI health coach, answers questions using personal data and is available to all members. The Ring 5, announced in May 2026 and shipping 4 June 2026 from $399, is 40% smaller than the Ring 4 and sold through the company's site and retailers including Amazon, Best Buy, Costco, Target and Walmart.
The financial trajectory accelerated with mainstream distribution. Oura sold about 1.3M rings in 2024, more than half of everything it had sold to that point, generating roughly $390M of hardware revenue plus $110M of subscription revenue. It raised a $200M Series D at a $5.2B valuation in December 2024, led by Fidelity with a $75M strategic investment from Dexcom to support glucose monitoring integration, added a $250M revolving credit facility in September 2025, then closed a $900M Series E at an $11B valuation in October 2025 led by Fidelity with ICONIQ, Whale Rock and Atreides. In its September 2026 S-1, Oura reported fiscal 2025 revenue of $908M and revenue of $1.21B for the nine months ended 30 June 2026, up 74% year over year, with net income of $60.8M over that period.
The IPO was the test of whether that growth story prices as software or as hardware. Oura filed publicly on 3 September 2026 and set terms on 21 September: 50 million shares at $40-44, raising up to about $2.2B at a valuation near $15.6B on the Nasdaq under the ticker OURA. On 29 September 2026 the company pulled the listing, citing market conditions, days before it was due to price. As of October 2026 Oura remains private, with Nasdaq Private Market marking its shares around $29.82, below the proposed range, and its long-term plan unchanged: move from wellness tracking into clinical-grade monitoring through blood-pressure signals, glucose integration and partnerships such as Counsel Health, while defending its category against Apple, Samsung and Whoop.
Oura is the rare consumer hardware company that became a software business without abandoning the hardware. The ring is the sensor; the product is a daily health service — Sleep, Readiness and Activity scores, cycle and stress tracking, blood-pressure signals, AI coaching — monetised through a $5.99 monthly membership that now covers millions of users. That combination produced numbers unusual for wearables: $1.21B of revenue in the nine months to June 2026, up 74% year over year, and $60.8M of net income, versus roughly break-even a year earlier. Oura filed to go public on 3 September 2026 seeking a valuation around $15.6B, then pulled the offering three weeks later as market conditions soured.
The business has been built patiently. Founded in 2013 in Finland, Oura spent its first years as a niche sleep-tracking ring beloved by biohackers, then crossed into the mainstream with Ring 3 and Ring 4, retail distribution through Target, Amazon, Best Buy, Costco and Walmart, and a women's-health platform that became one of its strongest differentiators. Revenue doubled in 2024 and again in 2025; total capital raised is about $1.5B, culminating in a $900M Series E led by Fidelity at an $11B valuation in October 2025, with Dexcom investing $75M separately to integrate glucose data.
What comes next is a strategic fight rather than a product one. Apple and Samsung now sell rings and watches with overlapping health features and vastly larger distribution; Whoop competes for the same serious-athlete customer; and Oura's own secondary-market price ($29.82 in October 2026) sits well below the $40-44 IPO range, a signal that private investors are less enthusiastic than the company's revenue trajectory implies. Oura's answer is to move from tracking to clinical value — blood-pressure signals, glucose integration, AI care partnerships — which raises the bar on regulatory clearance and evidence. The IPO was pulled, not cancelled; Oura still has the growth and the profitability to come back, if it can convince public investors that a ring is a platform.
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