Health Ring Firm Oura in Talks to Launch IPO

Health ring maker Oura has reportedly begun interviewing bankers to help it go public.

The company’s initial public offering (IPO) could happen as soon as this year, The Information reported Tuesday (March 24), citing a source with direct knowledge of discussions. The report notes that an IPO would follow rapid growth for Oura, which sells connected devices and a monthly subscription to an app that tracks aspects of a user’s health, like sleep and fitness.

Last fall, Oura raised more than $900 million at a valuation of roughly $11 billion. The company has taken in upwards of $2 billion to date, the report added, citing data firm PitchBook.

The Information also points out that direct-to-consumer brands are newly popular with investors, with online clothing seller Quince raising $500 million at a $10.1 billion valuation recently.

“There are many options open to Oura and—while we meet with banks and investors as regular course of business—we have not made any concrete decisions at this stage,” an Oura spokesperson told The Information. “For now, we’re focused on our customers and continuing to deliver the best product experience.”

The company recently announced plans to acquire Finland-based Doublepoint Technologies as Oura moves to add gesture and voice interactions to future iterations of its wearable devices.

The deal reflects a larger shift toward new forms of human-computer interaction as wearable devices move beyond passive health tracking, Oura CEO Tom Hale said, per a Bloomberg News report. Gesture controls, combined with voice inputs and AI-driven sensing, could eventually become a key part of how users interact with Oura’s smart rings.

“This is about a core capability that we can imagine as AI and different kinds of modalities and user interaction,” Hale said.

This is all happening amid a wider shift that is underway in consumer technology, with interfaces moving away from phones to “ambient computing embedded in everyday objects,” as PYMNTS wrote recently.

“Wearable devices are becoming a central platform for capturing health signals, authentication data and real-time context as AI moves closer to the user,” the report added.

Meanwhile, data released earlier this year by IDC projected a 49% increase in health ring shipments, compared to a 6% uptick in smartwatch shipments.