AT A GLANCE

• Company: Oura Health Oy

• Founded: 2013 in Oulu, Finland

• Users: Over 5.5 million rings sold (2025)

• Ring Price: $349-499 depending on material

• Subscription: $5.99/month or $69.99/year

• Annual Revenue: $1 billion projected (2025)

• Valuation: $11 billion (October 2025)

• Headquarters: Oulu, Finland; San Francisco, USA

• Key Metrics: 100% YoY growth, high-80s retention rate

Three Finnish engineers working in Oulu noticed something odd about fitness trackers in 2013. Every device on the market measured what people did while awake, yet nobody tracked the eight hours humans spent unconscious. Petteri Lahtela, Kari Kivelä, and Markku Koskela decided to build a ring that measured sleep quality instead of step counts.

Today, Oura Health holds an $11 billion valuation after raising $900 million from Fidelity Management in October 2025. The company sold 2.5 million rings in just the past 15 months, which represents more units than they moved in their entire first decade of operation. Revenue doubled to $500 million in 2024, then doubled again toward $1 billion in 2025. The subscription model that industry observers initially questioned now generates predictable recurring revenue at retention rates in the high-80s percentile.

The Finnish Engineering That Started a Category

Oulu, Finland had become a tech hub after Nokia's decline, with thousands of engineers pivoting from mobile phones to new ventures. Petteri Lahtela had spent 14 years in telecom before joining a chronic disease management startup in 2004. That experience showed him how slowly health data reached patients through traditional healthcare systems. Kari Kivelä, his cousin, was designing jewelry while working at Nokia, an unusual combination that would prove essential. Markku Koskela brought hyperspectral imaging expertise from his product development work.

The founders recognized that finger-based measurements offered technical advantages over wrist devices. Arteries in fingers sit closer to the surface than wrist veins, providing stronger pulse signals. Temperature fluctuations at extremities register earlier than core body changes. The ring form factor, once they could miniaturize the electronics, would allow continuous wear without the bulk of watches.

Their first prototype in 2013 was, admittedly, enormous. The electronics required made the ring thick and heavy. But Kivelä's design background meant even this first version looked intentional rather than clunky. The Kickstarter campaign in August 2015 validated market interest, raising $650,000 against a $100,000 goal in just 15 hours. Backers seemed particularly interested in the promise of sleep analysis over activity tracking.

The original rings came in black and white, colors chosen to represent the stark contrasts of Finnish seasons. The team was positioning Oura as something distinct from the colorful fitness bands flooding the market. They shipped the first units in 2016, three years after founding, having spent that time refining algorithms rather than rushing to market.

Minimize image

Edit image

Delete image

From Kickstarter to Celebrities: The Viral Growth Pattern

The path from Finnish startup to global phenomenon took an unexpected route through celebrity bedrooms. Prince Harry started wearing an Oura Ring publicly in 2018. Gwyneth Paltrow featured it in her wellness newsletter. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey began posting his fasting data from the ring. Each high-profile user brought waves of curious customers who wanted to track their sleep like tech billionaires and royalty.

Professional athletes discovered the ring independently. NBA players were caught wearing them under wristbands during games, violating league rules about in-game wearables. The players kept wearing them anyway, accepting fines rather than losing their recovery data. CrossFit athletes started comparing readiness scores before workouts. Golfers tracked their sleep quality during tournaments.

Then COVID-19 changed everything. In March 2020, researchers noticed that Oura's temperature tracking could detect fevers before users felt symptoms. The NBA used Oura Rings in their Orlando bubble to monitor players for early infection signs. PGA Tour golfer Nick Watney's ring showed temperature elevation; he tested positive for COVID despite feeling fine. The story went viral, positioning Oura as a health device rather than a fitness tracker.

Sales jumped 500% during the pandemic's peak months. Universities launched studies using Oura data for illness prediction algorithms. The U.S. military's Defense Innovation Unit partnered with Oura to monitor soldier readiness. Healthcare workers used rings to track their own exhaustion levels during endless shifts. What began as sleep tracking had become, almost accidentally, a public health tool.

The Subscription Model That Prints Money

Generation 3 launched in 2021 with a change that made some early users furious: mandatory subscriptions. The ring itself cost $299-499, but accessing your own health data now required paying $5.99 monthly (or $69.99 annually). Without the membership, users could see only basic daily scores, essentially rendering their expensive hardware useless.

Consider the economics from Oura's perspective. Hardware sales generate immediate cash but require inventory, shipping, and warranty support. Subscriptions provide predictable monthly revenue with minimal marginal costs. Each ring sold becomes a recurring revenue stream. At 88% annual retention and $72 per year, a single customer generates over $500 in subscription revenue across their lifetime, far exceeding the hardware profit margin.

The model has worked better than skeptics predicted. Revenue doubled from $250 million in 2023 to $500 million in 2024, then doubled again toward $1 billion in 2025. The fastest-growing user segment turned out to be women in their early twenties, a demographic the original Finnish engineers hadn't specifically targeted. These users seem particularly interested in cycle tracking and stress monitoring features added post-launch.

The subscription also changed how Oura develops features. Instead of saving improvements for next-generation hardware, they can push updates continuously. Blood oxygen monitoring, fertility windows, and AI coaching all arrived through software updates to existing rings. Users complain about the monthly fee, sure, but retention rates in the high-80s suggest they keep paying anyway.

Minimize image

Edit image

Delete image

The Algorithm That Knows You're Getting Sick

Oura tracks three primary scores: Readiness, Sleep, and Activity. The Readiness Score, ranging from 0 to 100, combines multiple physiological signals to estimate your body's capacity for physical and mental stress that day. It weights heart rate variability most heavily, followed by resting heart rate, body temperature deviations, and previous day's strain.

The measurement happens primarily during deep sleep, when your body reaches its most consistent baseline state. The ring's 18-path photoplethysmography system uses infrared light to track blood flow patterns through finger arteries. Temperature sensors detect variations as small as 0.1°C from your personal baseline. After four days of wear, the algorithm establishes your individual patterns. After several weeks, it can identify unusual patterns that often precede illness.

Sleep tracking divides the night into four stages (light, deep, REM, and awake) with accuracy rates around 79% compared to polysomnography lab equipment. That's good enough for consumer use, though not quite medical grade. The ring also tracks blood oxygen levels through the night, identifying potential breathing disruptions without the bulk of traditional sleep apnea monitors.

What makes this system work is personalization over time. Your optimal heart rate variability might be 30ms while someone else's is 90ms; absolute numbers matter less than deviations from your baseline. The ring learns that you always run slightly warm on Thursday nights (perhaps from weekly soccer practice) and adjusts accordingly. This individual calibration, built from millions of data points per user, explains why users often report the ring "knowing" they're getting sick before they feel symptoms.

Building the Health Ecosystem Through Partnerships

Rather than trying to build every health feature internally, Oura has systematically partnered with companies that already excel in specific domains. The December 2024 deal with Dexcom brought continuous glucose monitoring data into the Oura app. Dexcom invested $75 million as part of the partnership, validating the strategic value of the integration. Users can now see how their blood sugar affects their sleep quality, a connection many hadn't realized existed.

Natural Cycles, the Swedish fertility tracking app, integrated with Oura to provide temperature-based fertility predictions. Strava pulls in detailed workout data. The integration list keeps growing, with each partnership expanding what the ring can effectively monitor without Oura having to develop expertise in every health vertical.

The company has also pushed into traditional retail and luxury markets. Amazon and Target now stock Oura Rings, moving the product from online-only to mainstream retail shelves. The $950 Gucci collaboration might seem absurd for a health tracker, but it opened doors to fashion-conscious consumers who wouldn't wear a standard fitness device. Military contracts with the Air Force and Naval Research Center provide both revenue and validation of the ring's accuracy.

In 2024, Oura acquired two companies outright. Sparta Science brought sports performance analytics used by professional teams. Veri added metabolic health tracking capabilities. These acquisitions suggest Oura sees itself as more than a hardware company; they're building a health data platform that happens to include a ring as its primary input device.

Minimize image

Edit image

Delete image

The Competitive Battlefield: Samsung's Entry and Apple's Shadow

Samsung entered the smart ring market in July 2024 with the Galaxy Ring, priced at $399 with no subscription fee. This direct challenge to Oura's business model leverages Samsung's manufacturing scale and existing health ecosystem. Users get lifetime access to insights without monthly payments, though the feature set remains more limited than Oura's continuously updated platform.

Apple holds numerous ring-related patents but hasn't announced a product. Industry analysts suggest 2028 at the earliest for an Apple Ring launch, giving Oura several more years to solidify market position. Startups like Ultrahuman and RingConn sell rings for $199-349 with no subscriptions, competing primarily on price rather than features.

Yet Oura maintains market dominance through several defensive positions. They've accumulated health data from 5.5 million users over a decade, creating algorithms that new entrants can't quickly replicate. Celebrity users from Cristiano Ronaldo to LeBron James provide organic marketing that money can't easily buy. Research partnerships with universities from Tokyo to Stanford lend clinical credibility that consumer electronics companies struggle to match.

The October 2025 launch of Ring 4 Ceramic at $499 suggests Oura is moving upmarket rather than competing on price. The ceramic version offers identical functionality to the titanium model but appeals to users who want their health tracker to look like jewelry. Multi-ring support means wealthy users might own several rings for different occasions. The aluminum charging case that holds five full charges solves the travel problem that plagued earlier versions.

Strategic Decisions That Compound Over Time

The path from Finnish startup to $11 billion valuation reveals how focused execution compounds. Oura concentrated exclusively on sleep when every competitor counted steps. This narrow focus allowed them to build credibility in one domain before expanding. Users trusted Oura for sleep insights, then gradually adopted their readiness and activity features. Starting broad might have made them another mediocre all-purpose tracker.

The hardware-plus-subscription model changed unit economics fundamentally. Selling rings at slim margins makes sense when each customer generates $500+ in lifetime subscription revenue. The model requires patient capital initially but builds predictable recurring revenue over time.

Distribution channels determined growth velocity at each stage. Kickstarter proved initial demand without major marketing spend. Celebrity adoption provided credibility that paid advertising couldn't achieve. COVID created urgency around health monitoring. Amazon and Target brought mainstream scale. Each phase unlocked different customer segments with different acquisition costs.

Partnerships accelerated capability expansion without diluting focus. Instead of spending years developing glucose monitoring internally, Oura partnered with Dexcom. Rather than building fertility algorithms from scratch, they integrated Natural Cycles. This approach expanded features quickly while partners gained access to Oura's user base.

Premium positioning protected margins as the category commoditized. While competitors raced to lower prices, Oura launched ceramic versions at $499 and collaborated with Gucci at $950. Their fastest-growing segment, young women in their twenties, seem willing to pay premium prices for comprehensive health insights.

Geographic expansion required unusual patience for a venture-backed company. The company maintained dual headquarters in Finland and San Francisco for over a decade. Engineering stayed in Oulu while business development moved to California. This split structure preserved technical culture while accessing venture capital and US market opportunities.

The Next Decade: From Ring to Platform

Oura's ambition extends beyond hardware. The company sees itself becoming the health data layer connecting wearables, clinical testing, and healthcare providers. CEO Tom Hale describes building toward proactive health rather than just selling rings.

Platform developments underway include AI-powered health coaching using accumulated data, predictive health alerts before illness onset, integration with electronic health records, and corporate wellness programs for Fortune 500 companies. Research partnerships with major universities continue expanding. The $900 million raised in October 2025 funds this transformation. International expansion targets Asia's health-conscious consumers, while new form factors beyond rings remain under consideration.

Why Sleep Tracking Built an $11B Business

Oura succeeded by recognizing that people care more about recovery than activity. While Fitbit counted steps and Apple Watch sent notifications, Oura measured what happened during the eight hours people spent unconscious. That focus on sleep quality, recovery metrics, and actionable insights built a business worth $11 billion.

The smart ring category Oura created now accounts for 75% of fitness tracker revenue according to Circana, up from 46% a year ago. Younger consumers under 34 are twice as likely to own smart rings as older demographics. The form factor Oura pioneered has reshaped health wearables.

For entrepreneurs building in health tech, Oura demonstrates how finding an underserved metric and building beautiful hardware around it creates lasting value. Recurring subscriptions fund continuous improvement. Strategic partnerships expand capabilities without losing focus. Premium positioning preserves margins even as categories mature. The model succeeds because health optimization continues indefinitely. Each night generates new data. Each morning brings refined insights. The subscription persists because the pursuit of better health persists.

About the Author

Jonathan Sirotin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Erdos, building the performance layer for gaming. Previously, he founded Alpine Esports, scaling it to a top-10 North American esports organization before exiting to WGG. As a professional Rocket League player, coach, manager, and tournament organizer, Jonathan has spent years at the intersection of competitive gaming and performance optimization. He's building the infrastructure that 3.32 billion gamers need but don't yet have.