Oura, a Finland-based health tracking ring maker, announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Veri, a Finnish company that offers personalized metabolic health programs.
Veri uses FDA-cleared Abbott FreeStyle Libre 1, 2, or 3 sensors to collect data from users’ bodies to monitor metabolic health, and the app, enabled by the continuous glucose monitor (CGM), guides users to improve their diet, habits, and health.
This fall, Oura will integrate with Veri’s metabolic health service and introduce a new feature, “Meals,” that will allow members to track meal timing and understand how meal timing impacts sleep, stress and recovery.
The meals will be available in an opt-in section of the company’s Oura Labs app, allowing wearers to test features still in development and provide feedback.
Many of Veri’s employees will join Oura, including the three founders who will become employees of the ring manufacturer.
“Our strategy is to be an individual’s partner in their health, and to do that, we will continue to add new dimensions to the Oura experience, like we’ve done with heart health and women’s health. Metabolic health is the next natural dimension of that experience, and Veri is a key part of unlocking that dimension,” Oura CEO Tom Hale said in an email to MobiHealthNews.
“While the Oura Ring is currently a standalone product, we envision a world where other health data inputs, such as CGMs, and sensors will be included in the product experience and reflected in the data and insights displayed within the Oura app. The expertise of Veri’s employees will help us accelerate the realization of this vision, strengthen our product, and pave new avenues for metabolic health services.”
Larger trends
Last week, the FDA issued a recall of certain FreeStyle Libre 3 sensors, a component within the FreeStyle Libre 3 CGM system, due to a risk of inaccurately measuring high blood glucose levels.
“Use of the affected products may cause serious health problems, including severe low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), which may lead to central nervous system problems, loss of consciousness, seizures, coma, permanent brain damage, and death,” the FDA statement read.
Two injuries were reported, but no deaths were reported.
Oura debuted on Kickstarter in 2015 and has since raised a significant amount of funding.
The company announced it had secured $100 million in a Series C round in 2021, bringing its valuation to $2.55 billion in 2022. At the time, a spokesperson told MobiHealthNews the company had raised an “oversubscribed” funding round but did not disclose details about the amount raised.
In 2022, the company launched Oura for Business, which provides customized tools and recommendations for leaders based on group data while providing personalized insights to individuals.
Last year, the wearables company acquired all of the digital identity startup Proxy, which offers digital identity technology to replace keys, cards, badges, apps and passwords, and says it’s working to bring its products to mobile phones as well as wearable devices.
Oura has also partnered with teletherapy company Talkspace to allow Oura wearers to share personalized sleep and daily movement data with Talkspace therapists.
In May, the Finnish company added two heart health monitoring features to its Oura Ring Gen3 wearable: cardiovascular age (CVA) and cardiorespiratory fitness.
The CVA feature uses data from the device to estimate a user’s cardiovascular age relative to their chronological age. Users receive a CVA metric that indicates whether they are under, over, or in line (within 5 years) with their chronological age.
