Oura Health Oy is a Finnish company founded in 2013 that develops and manufactures a wellness ring. The company has over 600 employees and market leadership in smart ring sales, as well as a vast collection of key smart ring patents to provide a permanent and sustainable competitive advantage against other newcomers. Oura’s new CEO has previously taken two companies public, but the company is becoming too large for the domestic stock market environment, so a potential listing is more likely to be done in America.
The company announced in November 2024 that it expects to grow 100% in 2024, to roughly $500M.
Oura would be an absolute prime candidate for the stock market, and for a few years now, I’ve regretted not being able to buy its shares on the stock market. If it gets listed in the US, the valuation will likely be somewhere between damn expensive and outrageously expensive.
All in all, it would be great if Oura could become a new tech giant for Finland!
I don’t have experience with Oura products, let alone similar products from other providers, but you wiser ones tell me, what about Oura’s way of monetizing customers by charging 6 euros every month just so you can view data and other things the ring collects from the user? To my understanding, Oura’s competitors don’t do this.
Probably the real justification is that Oura charges because Oura can charge, as they are the best available. If you buy a competitor’s smart ring, you don’t know if those companies will even be around in a few years (Oura has sued every market player for patent infringements), whether they monetize your data by selling it to third parties, and whether they will continue manufacturing devices at all. At worst, by choosing the wrong manufacturer, all your data could soon be lost.
Of course, from the user’s perspective, the monthly fee commits them to using the ring, and on the other hand, it commits Oura to developing the app and continuously bringing new features, because the value of that monthly fee has to be justified somehow.
Certainly, the most interesting solution that the Oura ring enables is giving up birth control pills and condoms by indicating when it’s safe to have sex and when there’s a risk (or possibility) of children being born as a result of intercourse:
As a market leader, it is likely that Oura will have the most diverse integrations with other key devices in the health sector, and as the user’s personal data accumulates over years, synergy benefits will be gained in the long term.
For me, the monthly fee felt very unappealing at first. For a while, I also tried using the ring without the monthly fee and realized that Oura has managed to hide almost all useful data behind a paywall. Soon I returned to being a member.
Sleep and recovery are indeed not rocket science. Sleep enough, maintain a regular sleep rhythm, avoid alcohol, etc. For me, however, following the data obtained from the ring has motivated me to invest significantly in my own well-being. Therefore, I don’t think that 6e/month is a big investment for being able to cope better in everyday life and make smarter decisions for your own well-being. Additionally, as Eka already mentioned, Oura has continuously added more features to the app, which partly makes it easier to accept the 6e/month membership fee.
From a business perspective, I see it as positive that the ring is almost useless without a membership fee. Once you buy the ring, the added value obtained through the membership fee also ensures that you remain a member. Also, selling the ring forward to the next user is more difficult compared to sports watches, as everyone happens to have slightly different sized fingers.
I must also praise the company for this: a couple of years ago, when the battery life of my own ring significantly deteriorated, they sent a new ring free of charge to replace the old one.
As a customer, I have been very satisfied with the company and the product, and I am already eagerly awaiting its listing.
The 3rd generation Oura has been in use for 1.5 years, and I have been satisfied. I do shift work, and this has increased awareness of sleep and its stages.
Briefly explained, Oura scores your sleep and also provides readiness scores for your daily energy levels. New features have also been introduced during its usage, such as stress measurement and symptom monitoring, which predicts a possible upcoming illness. This past week I had the flu, and the ring reported an increase in body temperature.
As for the six-euro monthly fee, it’s a small investment in health.
If the pace is so wild that even a watch can’t withstand it, then you can get a Whoop band, also mentioned in the article.
And yes, at the time the photo was taken, the pace was wild.
Oura is certainly a very good product and has many users. I myself cannot use something like this; I can’t even wear a wedding ring because I do a lot of manual labor. A Garmin on my wrist has worked for me because it doesn’t interfere with physical work. However, Oura has its own user base. I wish the company success.
Oura has been successful in legal actions against competitors. Ultrahuman’s story might even end here:
Inside the legal drama that may exile Ultrahuman from the US
In an order dated 18 April, a US International Trade Commission (ITC) judge ruled that the Ring AIR—which tracks sleep, heart rate, skin temperature, and other health metrics— infringes every element of a smart-ring patent owned by Finnish wearable giant Oura, per court filings accessed by The Ken. It’s a big win for the $5.2 billion-valued company in a legal battle that has dragged on since September 2023, and sets the stage for a final showdown this August.
This is a big blow for Ultrahuman, whose Ring AIR makes up 90% of its revenue across the US, the UK, the UAE,…
Is it about that and escaping tariffs & protectionism? However, the largest market and one big military deal also seemed to fall through because of it.
Excluding fees, it can be seen that just under three million rings are sold annually. With an average price of 400e and a 6e monthly fee, that would amount to over a billion per year.
4 years in use, though already the 4th ring on my finger. A couple of the older units gave up the ghost, but OURA sent a new one for free to replace one of them.
This really is the new Tamagotchi. It’s nostalgic to keep yourself alive day after day.
“Oura. A smart ring for managing fitness, stress, sleep, and health.”
With over a year of experience, my wife, my brother’s family, and I are satisfied with the ring’s performance. The downside is the ring’s battery life. My wife got a new one for free when the battery gave out in less than a year, but now I and my brother’s wife have to charge every day, and the warranty no longer helps after more than a year. I think the battery should be more durable; I would understand a lifespan of around 3 years and would willingly buy a new ring then.
There have indeed been some battery issues with these; I think the smaller ones had smaller batteries anyway. From what I understand, Oura has been quite good about providing new or refurbished replacements even after the warranty has expired. Then again, it makes sense to provide a new ring, especially for a customer paying a monthly fee… In my case, the Gen 2 worked well, and the Gen 4 I’ve had for about a year now works just as well. Not perfectly, but well enough for my needs. My rings have been size 13 and now 12.
Here is SalkunRakentaja’s article about Oura, covering among other things how the company intends to stay off the stock market and that the company potentially plans to make a tender offer to its current investors.
Oulu-based Oura Health Oy is preparing a tender offer for its current investors, reports news agency Bloomberg citing anonymous sources.
The purpose of the arrangement is to offer early investors a chance to liquidate their holdings without the company needing to go public.
In the tender offer, shareholders can sell their shares at a discount of approximately 25 percent compared to last autumn’s Series E funding round. At that time, the company raised over 900 million dollars in funding at a valuation of 11 billion dollars.
