Oura is buying AI health startup Counsel Health for $625 million

Oura, best known for its health-tracking smart ring, is moving deeper into actual medical care. The company said Tuesday it has agreed to buy Counsel Health, a startup that calls itself an "AI-native primary care company," for $625 million.

What Counsel does

Counsel's service pairs an AI chatbot that answers medical questions with access to licensed physicians when a person needs one. Its answers can draw on the biometric data your wearable collects, and a conversation can move from the AI to one of Counsel's in-house doctors. Oura added the service to its app in June, so many Oura members have already used it.

The companies say they now plan to expand into preventive care, acute care, and specialty and chronic care. Oura CEO Tom Hale described the goal as helping members go from understanding their body's data to acting on it, whether that's a quick question, a prescription, lab results, ongoing care for a chronic condition or a referral.

The deal

• Price: $625 million.
• People: Counsel CEO Muthu Alagappan joins Oura as chief clinical AI officer. Bloomberg reported that Counsel has about 70 employees.
• Timing: Oura told The Verge it expects the deal to close before the end of the year.
• Existing customers: Counsel will keep serving its current and new business partners, with a goal of bringing its model to people beyond Oura's membership.

Counsel raised a $25 million Series A a year ago, led by Andreessen Horowitz and GV, and PitchBook estimates it raised about $36 million in total.

Why now

The purchase comes a few weeks after Oura indefinitely postponed an IPO that could have raised up to $2.2 billion, citing uncertainty in the IPO market. It also lands as rivals such as RingConn and Ultrahuman push into the smart ring market Oura has long dominated, so differentiation matters.

Business is growing either way. Alongside the deal, Oura reported revenue of $533 million for the quarter that ended September 30, up 153% from a year earlier, and about $1.75 billion for its 2026 fiscal year, up 92%. It was valued at $11 billion after a $900 million funding round in October 2025.

What it means for Oura users

Expect Oura's app to look less like a fitness dashboard and more like a front door to healthcare, with the ring's data feeding conversations with an AI and, when needed, a doctor. That's a bigger promise, and it comes with the questions that follow any AI used in medicine: how accurate the answers are, when a human steps in, and how health data is handled.