Oura Hits $11B. Can It Reach $100B?
Oura will have to evolve from a nice-to-have wellness company into a need-to-have healthcare company
Last week Bloomberg reported that Oura was raising at an $11 billion valuation. I wrote a quick take on LinkedIn, but wanted to write a deeper analysis for a few reasons.
Oura’s a tremendous success story for consumer hardware – at a time when so many VCs are hesitant to invest in consumer or hardware.
Oura also has an awesome origin story. Three Finnish entrepreneurs spent years tinkering on a prototype, and raised a Kickstarter to launch v1 in 2015.
Ten years later, Oura’s become a household name, generating $1 billion in 2025 revenue, and selling 5.5 million rings to date. (I’m one of those).
But I wanted to ask: Could an $11 billion valuation be just the beginning for Oura? What would it look like for Oura to grow into a $100 billion company?
Here’s my thesis: Oura will have to evolve from a nice-to-have wellness company into a need-to-have healthcare company.
Today, Oura’s product is a nice-to-have. But it’s hard to argue it’s a need-to-have.
Oura users like the sleep tracking; nearly every user says it helps them sleep more and drink less. But I don’t need my Oura, when I could accomplish the same by being a little more responsible about my habits.
Women like tracking their cycles with Oura. But they don’t need a wearable to do so, given apps like Flo and Clue.
And, if we’re being totally honest, people like their Oura as a status symbol. Walk around Pac Heights or West Village and you’ll see dozens of people wearing a ring that looks sleek and declares “I care about my health!” But I don’t need an Oura to make that fashion statement, let alone I don’t need to make that statement at all.
Granted, Oura’s revenue growth indicates they have plenty of room to run as a nice-to-have product. Their revenue’s tracking for $500 million 2024 -> $1 billion 2025 -> $1.5 billion 2026. That’s really fast growth at that scale, similar to the early trajectories of Apple Watch and Peloton.
Retention’s also strong, suggesting that revenue growth is sustainable. A hidden gem of the Bloomberg coverage is that Oura drives 20% of revenue from subscriptions. Let’s do some math. The latest ring costs $350 and the app is another $70/year – so year 1 costs $420 total. The $70 subscription is 17% of the $420 total. So if Oura’s subscription revenue is 20% of the total, that implies the average ring sold leads to ~15 months of subscription. That means people are buying the product, continuing to use it, and not churning.
There’s also lots of low-hanging fruit for Oura to keep growing. They can expand retail sales. Oura’s only sold in 4,000 doors today, compared to probably 50,000 - 100,000 for Apple Watches. They can expand internationally into new markets. And within the US, they can probably market more to not just biohackers / life optimizers in coastal cities, but a wider subset of Americans.
All that said, Oura’s EV/Revenue multiple from this round is 11x. That’s on par with Peloton and WHOOP’s peak 2021 multiples – which indicates that investors are already baking in a lot of the low-hanging fruit growth. They’re betting on Oura continuing to grow quickly, and probably growing a lot larger than $11 billion.
So how could Oura grow into a need-to-have product and a $100 billion company?
In my opinion, it’s all about multidimensional health data.
Oura currently tracks metrics like heart rate, respiratory rate and temperature. Those metrics might be helpful to know, but they become exponentially more helpful if combined with other datapoints.
Let’s say you’re experiencing fatigue. Your Oura might show below-average recovery scores. The prognosis is simple: Sleep more. But then add in a Function Health blood panel and a Levels glucose monitor. The bloodwork reveals high insulin and CGM reveals post-meal glucose crashes. The prognosis of “sleep more” changes to “adapt your diet.”
Oura needs to 1) integrate its ring data with more types of data, and 2) make it easier to get that data. Imagine if Oura triangulated not just your sleep, but also your workout routines, diet, supplements, bloodwork and medical history. All of a sudden, Oura becomes a personal OS for health. That product would drive more meaningful health outcomes, feel closer to a need-to-have, and generate more consumer willingness to pay.
Oura’s already moving in this direction. Last year, Oura partnered with Dexcom to integrate with their Stelo glucose monitor. So now diabetics can see how glucose interacts with their sleep and recovery. In May, Oura also added a meal tracking feature. So now users can layer in their diet’s impact on their sleep. Lastly, Bloomberg included in its coverage that “new product form factors are under consideration.” I’d love to see that corporate strategy deck…
Oura’s main competitor, WHOOP, is also integrating more data sources, but starting in a different place. In August, they announced a partnership with Quest where users can do bloodwork and see how biomarkers like metabolism and hormones interact with WHOOP’s sleep and recovery data.
I’d argue multidimensional data is a near-existential need for Oura. Other smart ring copycats are popping up. Ultrahuman from India, RingConn from China, and Velia from Switzerland have all essentially copied Oura’s product. Samsung also came out with its own smart ring last summer. Oura just won a US International Trade Commission patent battle against Ultrahuman and RingConn and got them barred from selling in the US.
But as any patent attorney will tell you, patents are more temporary roadblocks than long-term moats. There are plenty of past comps in consumer hardware: Fitbit vs. Jawbone, Apple vs. Samsung, etc. Eventually, more smart ring competitors will enter the market, undercut Oura on price, and force Oura to innovate.
Oura will keep its lead on these competitors by continuing to add more data sources. As an Oura user, I’d love for it to grow into my personal OS for health: combining my ring data, sleep, exercise routine, diet, supplements, medical history and more (all with limited manual input). That product feels like a need-to-have. And I think it’s how Oura becomes a $100 billion company.
It’s an ambitious vision. But back in 2015, when Oura was three guys tinkering on a prototype and raising a Kickstarter, an $11 billion valuation probably felt ambitious too.