Smart ring maker Oura is taking the leap into healthcare, and it just landed a major investment from Dexcom to help it cross the chasm.
Things are looking up for the creator of the Oura Ring. In just the last week:
- Oura entered a strategic partnership with continuous glucose monitoring giant Dexcom, who also handed it $75M in Series D funding and vaulted its valuation to a whopping $5B.
- The release of Oura’s Perimenopause Report was well-received for including a trove of hard-to-capture data and highlighting gaps in women’s health research.
- Apple squashed rumors that it was developing its own smart ring, meaning that the category dodged the same bullet that saw Apple steal nearly half of the headphone market overnight when it first launched the AirPods.
Oura got its start in 2013 helping health-conscious consumers optimize their performance with insights into areas like sleep quality and heart rate variability.
- It’s since shipped 2.5 million of its flagship Oura Ring and expects annual revenue to double to $500M before the end of 2024.
- Within the last year, Oura also began making a string of acquisitions to support its user base along more parts of their health journey, picking up both Sparta Science (data analytics) and Veri (glucose monitoring and meal timing insights).
Dexcom is hot on the heels of releasing its first over-the-counter Stelo CGM for prediabetic populations, which already has 70k users and is reportedly a “gateway product” to expand into the broader metabolic health market.
- The Oura partnership will enable two-way data flow between Dexcom biosensors and Oura wearables to provide “a first-of-its-kind metabolic health management experience,” with the first app integration expected in the first half of next year.
- The duo will also be co-marketing and cross-selling each other’s products to attract new customers who want to better understand the link between sleep, activity, nutrition, and their glucose.
The Takeaway
Oura has been looking to support its massive user base with deeper insights into their overall health, and Dexcom has been searching for ways to get its glucose monitoring devices in front of a non-diabetic audience. This seems like a match made in heaven.
