A ring, valued at 77.7 billion.
While the global investment theme still revolves around the next - generation AI hardware, a company founded twelve years ago is taking a dominant position in the AI - native hardware sector.
Its product is neither glasses nor a watch, but a ring weighing only 4 - 6 grams with a ring face less than 1 centimeter wide. This once - niche category is now creating a new wave in the wearable market.
Recently, a money - making champion named Oura has emerged in the male - dominated smart wearable market. It is a company that produces smart rings and is currently conducting a new round of Series E financing worth $875 million. This financing has pushed its valuation into the billion - dollar club, reaching $1.09 billion (approximately 77.7 billion RMB), doubling its valuation from the $500 million Series D financing in November last year.
Benefiting from the surge in demand in the smart wearable market, this round of financing will be the largest in Oura's history. People familiar with the matter said that since the transaction has not been closed, the final financing amount may exceed $900 million.
The capital market's enthusiasm for Oura doesn't stop there. The company said that it had obtained a $250 million revolving credit line from a consortium of banks including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Barclays in early September.
Regarding Oura's popularity, its CEO, Tom Hale, said in a recent interview that Oura's growth is "like a rocket" and added that in the 130 quarters he has been in business, "he has never seen such a strong quarter."
From Crowdfunding to a Billion - Dollar Valuation
Oura's story began in Oulu, Finland, in 2013. Its original name was Jouzen, derived from the Finnish word "joutsen," which means "swan," the national bird of Finland. The brand name was changed to Oura before its launch.
The founding team mainly consists of Petteri Lahtela, Kari Kivelä, and Markku Koskela. They have worked for several companies in Oulu's vibrant technology industry (including Polar and Nokia) and have rich experience in product, engineering, and R & D. The founders understood the importance of sleep and recovery, but there were few tools to effectively measure these factors. To fill this gap, they set out to create a device that combines accuracy, comfort, and actionable insights.
"So far, there hasn't been an easy and convenient way to understand how your body recovers after dealing with daily challenges," said co - founder Petteri Lahtela. "That's why we created Oura."
Image from the official website
Like most companies, Oura had a tough start. Without users and data, early employees used their own health data to test the product's functions. Moreover, cash flow was also a major challenge, and salaries were sometimes delayed for months. "We lived on personal credit cards, but everyone came to work every day because our vision was to bring the Oura Ring to the world," an early employee recalled.
Its financing was also unsmooth in the early stage. After its establishment in 2013, it didn't receive its first $2.3 million in financing until the end of 2015.
After two years of R & D, the first - generation Oura Ring (Gen1 for short) was launched in 2015. The product aimed to provide a proof - of - concept for the market. In August of the same year, Oura Ring launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter and reached the $100,000 target in just 15 hours. The crowdfunding campaign lasted for 37 days and raised a total of $650,000, exceeding expectations.
An unexpected bonus was that the Stanford Research Institute bought two rings from Kickstarter and found in its research that the Oura Ring was the most accurate wearable device for measuring sleep quality and sleep stages. This research, unknown within Oura, was published in March 2017 and brought more positive attention to Oura. Seizing the opportunity, in November 2017, the second - generation Oura Ring (Gen2 for short) made its debut at the Slush technology conference in Finland and was officially mass - produced and launched in 2018. After its successful launch, sales soared to nearly 10,000 units.
In 2018, Oura's staff reached about 50 people. The business expanded to the United States, and a more formal management team was established. The addition of experienced marketing, sales, and product development professionals helped Oura build a global influence. By August 2019, consumers in over 100 countries had purchased more than 100,000 Gen2 smart rings. In 2020, as the world entered a period of "black swan" events, the Oura Ring was used for early COVID - 19 screening due to its body temperature monitoring function, and sales began to skyrocket.
This growth directly promoted the financing process. In May 2021, Oura successfully completed a $100 million Series C financing, officially entering its peak development period.
Based on the accuracy and excellent experience of the Oura Ring, it has become popular among athletes in some American sports leagues, such as the NBA (basketball), UFC (fighting), and NASCAR (racing), and has won the favor of people like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Prince Harry of the UK.
Also after 2020, Oura began to expand its new customer group: enterprises. It launched its first enterprise product, "Health Risk Management." Its customers include hospital systems, banks, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, as well as sports leagues and teams such as the NBA, WNBA, and the Aston Martin Red Bull Racing Team.
According to the company's internal data, since 2015, 5.5 million Oura Rings have been sold, with 3 million sold last year alone. The revenue reached $500 million and is expected to reach $1 billion in 2025.
AI "Native" Hardware and Data Moat
Similar to many AI hardware products on the market today, the AI function of the Oura Ring is just an added bonus, and its essence lies in the excellent hardware itself.
Currently, Oura's latest product is the Oura Ring 4, which was launched last year. In addition to the built - in sensors that can continuously and accurately monitor various vital sign data, it has also upgraded its proprietary Smart Sensing technology. Smart Sensing is a complete technology platform where algorithms and sensors work together.
The core upgrade of Smart Sensing is the enhanced signal paths. Compared with the 8 signal paths of the previous generation (Gen3), the Oura Ring 4 has increased them to 18. This means that the ring can capture signals from more angles and automatically select the signal path with the best quality, ensuring the continuity and accuracy of data.
On the software side, Oura launched the AI - driven Oura Advisor last year, which mainly provides personalized guidance and insights to help members achieve their health goals. Specifically, the Oura Advisor can deeply understand and interpret the health data detected and collected by the hardware and further analyze the long - term trends and patterns represented by this data. It can also proactively remind users and conduct correlation analysis.
Image from the official website
Therefore, Oura's products have evolved from initially focusing on sleep monitoring to an AI - native health platform integrating multiple functions such as heart rate, blood oxygen, body temperature, stress, and menstrual cycle prediction.
More importantly, at the beginning of this year, Oura obtained the "medical device certification" from the US FDA, which means that its data and analysis have reached the medical level, directly raising the company's ceiling. To build a more complete medical ecosystem, Oura has also acquired data analysis companies Veri and Sparta Science and reached a strategic cooperation with the continuous glucose monitoring giant Dexcom to jointly develop diabetes chronic disease management solutions.
Oura has also pioneered the "hardware sales + subscription service" model. The ring is priced at approximately 399 euros, but a monthly subscription fee of 5.99 euros is required for full access to the application. Currently, about 20% of Oura Ring's revenue comes from subscriptions. Its largest institutional customer is the US Department of Defense, which has distributed tens of thousands of rings to military personnel for fatigue tracking. Although its CEO emphasized that this contract only accounts for a small portion of its global revenue. Meanwhile, NASA is also a major customer, and its products can help astronauts monitor their health in extreme environments such as space.
Regarding this round of financing, Oura revealed that the funds will be mainly used for three purposes. Firstly, to research and develop "non - invasive blood glucose trend monitoring." Secondly, to recruit more medical data scientists and train "health models for specific populations," such as "elderly health monitoring models" and "pregnant women's health management models." Thirdly, and most relevant to us, they will focus on the Asian market, including China, Japan, and India.
Perhaps because the sector is niche enough, at this stage, Oura still focuses on its internal development. When asked why big companies like Apple and Samsung won't catch up, Hale gave a definite answer. He said, "It's difficult for them because we have a data moat of nearly 15 billion hours."
At the beginning of the story, three Finnish engineers wanted people to "sleep well." In the next chapter of the story, it may depend on whether the entire human race can sleep soundly at the intersection of data and the body. Oura's story also provides an inspiration for current AI hardware entrepreneurs, that is, a good hardware foundation is always the leading "1." Only when the "1" exists can the "0s" such as big IPs, emotional value, and AI empowerment truly play their value.
This article is from the WeChat official account "China Venture Capital", author: Zhang Xue. Republished by 36Kr with authorization.