CEOs and celebrities love Oura’s sleep-tracking ring. Its CEO has a plan to stay ahead of Apple and Google

(CNN) — One of the Apple Watch’s biggest threats has no screen, weighs about a fifth of an ounce and charges a monthly subscription for most of its features. Yet Oura is on pace for $1 billion in sales this year, boosted by its presence on the fingers of celebrities including Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Dell.

The health-tracking ring that measures sleep, physical activity and other biometrics from your finger is having a moment, growing from a relatively obscure Finnish startup to a smartwatch alternative favored by CEOs, sports players and movie stars.

But Big Tech has taken notice. Once an upstart competitor, Oura now has competition of its own. Like technology past, it now needs to evolve – or risk fading out.

CEO Tom Hale says he has a plan.

More than just rings

Ten years after launching its first ring, Oura expects to reach $1 billion in sales in 2025, doubling its 2024 revenue. And consumers bought more than half of the 5.5 million total Oura Rings ever sold in the last year alone.

But rivals like Google, Samsung and Apple are ramping up their health offerings, launching new health-related wearables and AI services.

Apple, Samsung and the Google-owned Fitbit have all introduced wellness or sleep-oriented features similar to Oura’s in recent years.

Oura’s strategy to stay ahead? Hale sees a future in which Oura Rings may connect to even more devices around the body. He also thinks there’s a lot more to be done with the device we already carry around every day: the smartphone.

“The phone is a super powerful processing and sensing device. Like, how do we take advantage of that?” Hale said in an interview with CNN.

There’s a reason Oura has stuck with rings instead of expanding to more popular devices like smartwatches. The company has long claimed that the finger is more accurate than the wrist for tracking health data.

That approach has worked in Oura’s favor as consumers increasingly seek discrete distraction-free tech without screens, according to Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager covering the wearables industry for the International Data Corporation.

But the company hasn’t ruled out taking health measurements from other body parts. Hale said he’s been interested in measuring brainwaves through the ears and core body temperature and heart data from the torso.

Just don’t expect Oura to make those devices. When asked whether Oura would consider developing devices other than rings, Hale said the company would consider partnering “with other wearables that do special things that are unique and different.”

Oura already works with glucose maker Dexcom to combine ring-measured metrics, like physical activity, heart rate and sleep, with glucose data. The company is more likely to partner with medical tech companies rather than consumer gadget makers in future collaborations to ensure accuracy, Hale said.

He also sees opportunity to use smartphones to capture health signals, saying that he’s seen prototypes that can analyze a person’s cough or measure their stress by the sound of their voice. It’s not a new idea; services such as Canary Speech and Together by Renee have claimed to deduce mood signals from a user’s voice. Amazon’s now-defunct Halo health app also analyzed tone of voice to read emotions.

But more broadly, Hale expects AI to eventually help combine individuals’ data from wearables with medical records so we can better understand our own health.

Combining insights from wearable devices with clinical data could help providers understand patients’ overall health more, said Arielle Trzcinski, a principal analyst covering health care at Forrester.

“Folks don’t want to be going to the doctor all the time,” she said. “And the clinician also needs to have a better picture of what’s happening with this person outside of just sitting in my exam room for five minutes.”

The competition gets tougher

Oura’s competition is heating up. Google now has an AI health coach similar to Oura’s, and Apple added hypertension alerts to the Apple Watch and heart rate monitoring to AirPods this year. Samsung last year launched its first health tracking ring, which directly competes with Oura, and is also working on an AI-powered health chatbot.

Companies like Google and Meta have built their wearables businesses through acquisitions and partnerships. But when asked whether Oura would ever sell to a Big Tech competitor, Hale cited Oura’s independence as a benefit.

“That’s an advantage for us that maybe we might lose should someone come knocking, because people might lose some trust,” he said. “I think health uniquely has a lot to do with trust. I actually think that’s one of the things that Oura has really gotten right.”

Health care systems have also told the company they appreciate that Oura works with both iPhone and Android, said Hale, a perk that could change if Oura were to ever get acquired.

Oura, like many tech companies, is navigating the new world of AI. People are increasingly turning to ChatGPT for questions about health and wellness, and Oura will soon have to compete with new types of wearables, like Meta’s smart glasses, for consumers’ dollars and attention. While Meta’s glasses aren’t meant to be health trackers, the company launched a sports-oriented Oakley-branded model earlier this year.

Oura will need to continue improving its health tech and software to stand out, said Grace Harmon, a tech and AI analyst for eMarketer. That’s especially true considering its devices don’t come cheap; the ring itself starts at $349 and requires a $6 monthly subscription to unlock most of its features. Apple and Samsung don’t require subscriptions for their smartwatches, although many of Google’s more detailed health analytics are paywalled behind Fitbit Premium.

“The real differentiation is going to come from software, especially the quality of recovery, stress and insights that a device can deliver,” Harmon said. For example, Oura launched an AI-powered assistant earlier this year that can answer questions about a user’s sleep and other metrics.

Hale thinks wearables could play an important role in helping people with difficult-to-treat chronic illnesses manage their symptoms, but that requires further tailoring Oura’s apps and readings for individual needs. People with chronic fatigue syndrome might want to make sure they’re getting enough rest, while someone with lupus might want to look for early signs of flare-ups.

“How do I sense it coming quickly so I can intervene quickly?” Hale said. “I think that’s game changing.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.