Mark Zuckerberg, Cristiano Ronaldo, Jennifer Aniston, and Prince Harry have one thing in common: They all own Oura Rings.
The Finnish company Oura, founded in 2013, is on the verge of a growth spurt as its niche innovation in wearable tech heads for the mainstream. Demand has boomed recently, with sales set to double this year and nearing the $500 million mark.
Oura just capped off a Series D funding round in December led by Fidelity Management, which values the company at $5.2 billion. The capital injection is a key milestone, given that Oura was valued at half that figure just two years ago.
The global wearable tech market is set to expand by 14.6% by the end of the decade. Of that group, smart glasses and rings are the ones seeing the most growth.
This could be just the beginning of Oura’s popularity as the company also has plans to go “beyond the ring” with its new influx of funding, CEO Tom Hale said.
“We’re seeing kind of cultural relevance here in that Oura is becoming a shorthand for how you’re doing. It’s like the doctor’s note that isn’t a doctor’s note,” Hale told Fortune‘s Leadership Next podcast earlier this year.
So, what made Oura a worthy competitor to the Apple Watches of the world?
Leaning into sleep
Oura was founded in Finland by Petteri Lahtela, Markku Koskela, and Kari Kivela, who wanted to find a way to gather wellness information on one’s finger.
In 2015, the young startup launched a Kickstarter campaign (like Peloton and Allbirds did), raising over $650,000 by the end and exceeding its goal sixfold. The following year, Oura won a CES Innovation Award that helped establish it as an emerging tech company.
From its early days, Oura’s approach to overall wellness lured many users amid a growing focus on health. More specifically, the Oura Ring gave people insights on their sleep levels, which hit a “sweet spot with a particular customer set,” Hale said, according to the Financial Times.
Oura’s app shows its users a “Readiness Score,” a number from one to 100 that reveals their preparedness for the day based on various health metrics, including sleep quality, heart rate, body temperature, and more.
“Wearable tech is for anyone who wants to better understand the state of their health and live more optimally for longer,” Hale said.
Smartwatches from Apple or Garmin serve daily utility or track exercise but aren’t comfortable to wear all day long. They may also need to be charged more frequently. On the other hand, Oura Rings fit more seamlessly as an accessory and have a longer battery life.
The latest version, the Oura Ring 4, which launched in October, aims to be even sleeker in its look and feel.
Don’t let the size of Oura’s devices fool you into thinking they cost less. They follow a subscription model that costs $6 a month, while the ring costs upwards of $350.
Put a ring on it
Wellness and longevity are hot topics—and Oura is playing the long game in the tech market by catering to these trends.
Celebrities have been spotted wearing Oura Rings, a culmination of the overall clout the device has gathered over the past decade. CEOs think the device boosts their performance by giving them specifics on their energy levels throughout the day.
For now, Oura is a leader in the tech it pioneered. Hale confidently wrote off Apple foraying into the wearable ring market, leaving the Finnish company to contend with a small but growing pool of rivals.
However, Hale has noticed people pairing up an Oura ring with another wearable—often times, an Apple Watch, he told Fortune.
Competitors are in plenty: for instance, this summer Samsung launched a Galaxy Ring, which doesn’t charge a subscription fee and is made by one of the biggest tech companies globally. Still, Hale is unfazed by the competition; he argues that it further underscores the unique value of this category of wearable tech.
Meanwhile, the Oura Ring is finding new ways to be indispensable: It‘s been used in marriage proposals and indicated how stressed Americans were in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s election.
Women are Oura’s fastest-growing segment, with those between the ages of 25 and 34 representing a third of the women using its rings. Following Trump’s victory, Hale quelled concerns about the privacy of medical data, assuring users that their information would be kept private.
“Our business model is we serve you and our goal in serving you is to improve your health,” Hale told Fortune. “You think about like some of our competition, maybe they’re not quite so scrupulous or maybe they just have stronger incentives to actually, do something with that data that’s not, strictly speaking, in the interests of your health. We are 100% focused on it.”
A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on Dec. 20, 2024.
