But Hale is keen to underline how these days, he no longer fits the typical profile of the Oura wearer. Where sleep tracking — the Oura ring’s initial pull — was what Hale calls “the Trojan horse” for the business, due to the clarity of biometric data that can be collected over the long stretch that the wearer is asleep, he credits Oura’s rapid sales acceleration over the last two years to its expansion into women’s health features and its adoption among younger consumers. Hale, in particular, saw an opportunity to capitalize on our current culture’s growing obsession with wellness.
“We saw that with women’s health there were a lot of unsolved problems and underserved customers, and wearables weren’t doing a great job of solving those needs,” Hale says. “Here’s the powerful insight: a woman’s physiology changes every 30 days; my body doesn’t change that much. From working out the best time to exercise to when to try to conceive, there were so many areas for us to focus on. So we doubled down on women’s health and it’s paid off immensely — women have flocked to Oura and it’s driven our growth through the roof.”
Fresh off a $900 million series E funding round last month, which valued the company at $11 billion, Hale says Oura has doubled its sales every year since 2022. Looking ahead, he expects Oura to reach more than $1.5 billion in sales in 2026, as the company doubles down on its health features and expands into more geographies. Originally founded in Finland, Oura has undergone significant international expansion over the last year into retailers in more than 20 countries, including the UK, where Hale says business has grown 290% in the last year. Oura has also recently entered Germany, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The US — where the consumer obsession with wellness and longevity is leading the way globally — is Oura’s biggest market.
“Show me the business around here that’s growing 100% year-on-year, isn’t losing money, and is a billion dollars in revenue,” Hale says, looking around the conference hall. “I guarantee you we are literally it.”
Gen Z women driving growth
Oura, which launched its first ring in 2015, introduced women’s health features with period predictions in late 2022. It was soon followed by contraception, after it partnered with the FDA-approved birth control app Natural Cycles, which says it uses body temperature to “prevent and plan for pregnancy naturally”. It then expanded to include hormonal cycle insights in 2023 and pregnancy insights in 2024. Oura’s AI-powered “advisor” uses the ring’s data to make predictions of where the wearer is in their cycle, as well as suggestions for why the wearer may be more fatigued than usual, or the type of exercise they should engage in during that phase.
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