How a Little-Known Finnish Company Became One of the World’s Hottest Gadget Startups

In the startup world, smart-ring pioneer Oura is a rare beast. It isn’t just a unicorn valued at more than $5 billion, but also profitable in a uniquely unforgiving realm: consumer electronics. 

Oura’s smart ring is on its fourth iteration, and millions of people rely on it for tracking their health. Like a smartwatch, it monitors things like heart rate, skin temperature and movement. But what it does with that data is different—more focused on health than fitness. For example, because the ring gathers data 24/7, its wearers wake up to a “readiness score” which factors in everything from how they slept to evidence they might be feeling stressed. These insights are a product of a huge amount of health data, including a trove volunteered by 70,000 of its users that now enables the ring to predict when a wearer is becoming sick before they show symptoms.