Oura bets $625 million on Counsel Health to put a doctor in its app

Oura, the maker of the smart ring worn by more than six million members, agreed on Tuesday to buy Counsel Health, an AI-native primary care startup, for $625 million in cash, the company announced on its blog. The deal turns a wellness gadget into a front door for medical care: members will be able to go from a reading on their ring to a chat with Counsel's medical AI and, when needed, to a licensed physician who can diagnose, prescribe and order labs inside the Oura app.

The price is a statement of intent. Counsel had disclosed only $36 million in funding, and Oura chief executive Tom Hale told Bloomberg the purchase is several times larger than any deal the company has done before, Quartz reported. It also comes at an awkward moment for the capital markets side of the business. Oura postponed its planned Nasdaq listing on Sept. 29, citing uncertainty in the IPO market, after targeting a raise of up to $2.2 billion. Instead of using public money to expand, Oura is spending its own cash to buy a clinical business outright.

Oura can afford to. Alongside the deal, the company released preliminary results showing revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30 rose 153% from a year earlier to $533 million, with adjusted EBITDA of $87 million, a 16% margin. Revenue for fiscal 2026 came to about $1.75 billion, up 92%. Oura said the figures are unaudited and may change as it completes its audit. Executive chairman David Shuman pointed to that growth and the size of the member base as the reasons the company felt confident putting $625 million in cash on the table.

The two companies already know each other. Counsel has been available inside the Oura app since June, and Oura said more than half of the Counsel users in its Oura Labs program have chosen to share their ring data with their physicians. Counsel's model pairs a chatbot with in-house, board-certified doctors who step in when a question needs a human. According to Bloomberg, as cited by Quartz, its bench of on-demand physicians stands at roughly 50, and its founder expects it to grow.

Oura frames the purchase as an answer to a shortage of doctors and time. In its announcement, the company said a typical U.S. primary care visit lasts about 18 minutes and that the country could be short as many as 86,000 physicians by 2036. Its argument is that a doctor who can see weeks of sleep, heart and temperature trends is better placed than one relying on a patient's memory. "Together, Oura and Counsel can bridge that gap," Hale said in the announcement.

The deal also sharpens Oura's position in a market that is getting more crowded. Rivals such as RingConn and Ultrahuman are trying to take share in smart rings, TechCrunch reported, which puts pressure on Oura to offer something a cheaper ring cannot. Turning the device into a gateway for prescriptions, lab results and chronic care is a way to make the subscription harder to drop.

Counsel founder and chief executive Muthu Alagappan, a physician, will join Oura as chief clinical AI officer, and Counsel's 70 employees will come with him, according to Bloomberg. Counsel raised a $25 million Series A a year ago led by Andreessen Horowitz and GV, TechCrunch reported. Alagappan said Counsel has built its medical AI with "physicians in the loop for clinical decisions," a point that matters as regulators and patients weigh how far chatbots should go in health care.

Counsel will keep serving its enterprise partners, including health plans, health systems and employers, after the acquisition. Oura said that could carry Counsel's model to people who do not wear its ring, widening the market beyond its own members.

The transaction is subject to purchase price adjustments and customary closing conditions and is expected to close before the end of the calendar year. Hale told Bloomberg he had nothing new to share on when Oura might revisit a listing, which leaves the company's next test squarely on execution: whether members who track their bodies every night will also trust the same app with their care. For more on deals reshaping the industry, see our Healthcare Sector and our report on Anthropic's IPO range, a sign of how the listing window is treating other private giants.