Oura Health Looks At Potential $800 Million Valuation

Oura Health Oy, which is a Finnish company that makes devices to track sleep, physical activity and other types of well-being, is talking with investors about a possible fundraise that would value the company at $800 million, Bloomberg reported.

The discussions signify the second fundraising in as many years for the company, according to Bloomberg. Last year, Oura raised $28 million from Google’s Gradient Ventures, Square and Forerunner Ventures. That built on earlier investments from like Michael Dell’s MSD Capital, actor Will Smith and former professional basketball center Shaquille O’Neal.

It is unclear who the investors in the current round are.

Oura CEO Harpreet Singh Rai is aiming to get into the popularity of wearable technology to let users look after their health and possibly predict illness, Bloomberg reported.

Researchers have studied whether Oura rings on peoples’ fingers, along with other such tech like the Fitbit or Apple Watch, could be used to tell whether COVID-19 was coming on, according to Bloomberg. The research ended up finding that those devices could be used to help with that cause.

The global wearable technology industry was valued at $37.1 billion in 2020, Bloomberg reported. It is expected to grow to $104.4 billion by 2027, with some of the growth attributable to pandemic-related concerns.

“’The outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis has expanded the role of wearable technologies in the healthcare sector’ and has opened up new applications for early detection, according to a June report” by Grand View Research, Bloomberg reported.

Wearable tech has become popular in the past few years. It saw more than $500 billion in revenues by the end of 2020 and accounted for some 20 percent of all proximity payments, according to stats from Munich-based Smart Payments Association (SPA).

The stats also showed that the wearable payments increased by 365 percent between 2017 and 2020. A quarter of Europeans reported wanting to buy goods and services with the tech in the future.