Smart-Ring Maker Oura Nears IPO Pricing With Order Books Four Times Oversubscribed

Oura Inc., the maker of the health-tracking smart ring, is racing toward the biggest U.S. stock market debut in months. The San Francisco-based company set final terms for its initial public offering this week, and bankers said investor demand for the deal was running at roughly four times the shares on offer, a signal that Wall Street's appetite for growth stocks has not been dulled by weeks of rising bond yields and jittery trading.

Oura and a group of existing shareholders are together offering 50 million shares priced between $40 and $44 apiece, a deal that could raise as much as $2.2 billion. Order books were expected to close Monday afternoon, with pricing likely Tuesday and shares set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker OURA shortly after, according to the company's own newsroom announcement of the offering.

The numbers behind the deal

At the top of its range, Oura would carry a market value of roughly $14.1 billion, or about $15.6 billion on a fully diluted basis that accounts for employee stock options and restricted units. That would mark a striking climb from the $11 billion valuation the company fetched in a late-2025 funding round that raised more than $900 million, and from the $5.2 billion it was worth in December 2024.

The company's underlying business has grown quickly enough to make the case for that markup. Revenue for the nine months ended June 30 rose 74 percent from a year earlier to $1.21 billion, and membership revenue — the recurring $5.99-to-$6-a-month subscription fee required to unlock full use of the ring's health data — jumped 121 percent to $240.5 million. Gross margin improved to 55 percent from 51 percent, and the company reported net income of $60.8 million over that nine-month stretch. Oura shipped roughly 3.6 million rings over the twelve months ended June 30 and counted about 5 million paying members, more than double the figure a year earlier, with a 12-month retention rate near 85 percent. Filing records in the SEC's EDGAR database show the company registered the offering under the ticker OURA with a fiscal year ending September 30.

How a Finnish ring became a Wall Street test case

Oura was founded in Finland in 2013 and has since relocated its headquarters to San Francisco, building a business around a titanium ring, typically priced from $349 to $499, that tracks sleep, heart rate, temperature and activity. Chief executive Tom Hale, a veteran of Adobe and the polling company Momentive, took over in 2022 and has pushed the company beyond fitness enthusiasts into a broader wellness and even pharmaceutical audience. Roughly 80 percent of revenue still comes from hardware sales, with the rest from subscriptions, a mix the company is trying to shift toward recurring income as it matures.

The offering's structure underscores how much of the excitement is about an exit for early backers rather than fresh capital for the company. Of the 50 million shares on offer, only 13.5 million are being sold by Oura itself; the remaining 36.5 million belong to existing investors, led by Forerunner Ventures, which is selling its entire roughly 9 percent stake. Most of the roughly $532 million in net proceeds Oura expects to keep is earmarked not for expansion but for covering tax withholding tied to employee stock vesting, a detail that has drawn attention from analysts weighing whether the IPO is best understood as a liquidity event rather than a growth raise, a pattern documented in an analysis of the company's regulatory filings.

Who stands to gain, and who is watching

Two cornerstone investors have already committed to the deal: Eli Lilly, which indicated interest in buying up to $100 million of shares, and the growth-equity firm Dragoneer Investment Group, which indicated up to $300 million, together accounting for close to a fifth of the offering. Eli Lilly's interest is not purely financial — the drugmaker already routes Oura ring data through its LillyDirect telehealth platform to help monitor patients on GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, a collaboration that has turned a wearable device maker into an unlikely partner for pharmaceutical companies chasing better ways to track patients between doctor visits, a dynamic reported in coverage of the listing's health care angle.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan are leading the bank syndicate, with Allen & Company and Jefferies also involved; Robinhood is acting as a retail-focused co-manager, giving individual investors a more direct shot at shares than is typical for a deal this size. Rivals including Whoop, Garmin and Apple's own smartwatch line will be watching closely, since Oura's valuation is being benchmarked in part against sales multiples for established hardware makers like Garmin, and a strong debut would validate the premium investors are being asked to pay for a company still reliant on device sales for the bulk of its revenue.

What people are saying

Bankers and analysts have cast the offering as more than one company's moment, framing it as an early referendum on whether investors are still willing to pay up for consumer technology stocks after a stretch of higher interest rates and choppier markets. The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate this month for the first time since 2023, part of a backdrop of tighter financial conditions that has made some fund managers more selective, according to the Fed's own statement following its September policy meeting.

"Oura is the first real test of US appetite after a sluggish September so far and a period of more volatile markets," said Samuel Kerr, global head of equity capital markets at Mergermarket. "If it comes strongly out the gate, it will encourage other issuers. However, a weaker IPO might set alarm bells ringing that market sentiment may be turning."

Kat Liu, an analyst at the IPO research firm IPOX, said Oura's appeal lies partly in its positioning against more clinical-looking wearables. "One of Oura's strengths is that it is beginner friendly, fashionable and feels more like an easy add-on to everyday life, compared with some wearables that are more geared toward serious athletes and performance tracking," Liu said, adding that the valuation "is clearly pricing in continued strong growth and a further shift toward higher-margin recurring revenue."

What happens next

If the deal prices as expected this week, it would be the first U.S. offering to raise more than $1 billion since the sandwich chain Jersey Mike's went public in July, according to a report on the order book's demand, making Oura's reception a closely watched proxy for a broader pipeline of consumer and health-technology companies weighing their own listings later this year. Company representatives and Goldman Sachs both declined to comment ahead of pricing.

Oura's prospectus also flags risks that will follow the company into public markets regardless of how the stock trades on its first day: continued reliance on hardware sales for the bulk of revenue, exposure to component supply chains, and pending litigation that includes patent disputes and consumer claims over the accuracy of its sleep-tracking marketing. None of that has dented demand so far. Barring a last-minute reversal, Oura is expected to price late Monday or Tuesday and begin trading shortly after, handing public investors their first chance to bet on whether a piece of jewelry that tracks sleep and stress can sustain a valuation more commonly associated with established technology companies.