Oura’s latest deal suggests that its popular smart ring could soon become a remote control for your life
Oura has acquired Doublepoint, a gesture-recognition software startup focused on wearables, hinting at what may be to come from the popular smart ring maker now valued at roughly $11 billion.
It marks the wearable company’s fourth acquisition, following Sparta Science, Veri and Proxy.
Helsinki, Finland-based Doublepoint was founded in 2020 and specializes in helping wearables detect subtle hand movements — ideal for Oura, which believes the next phase of wearable AI will be driven by a combination of voice and gestures.
The deal will support the smart ring company’s future offerings and advance “more intuitive ways” for members to interact with technology, Oura said.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
To give a sense of its specialty, Doublepoint’s gesture recognition (when paired with eye tracking) lets users look at what they want to select, then pinch to confirm, according to its website. The company also enables smartwatches to act as personal remote controllers for smart devices, letting users turn lights on and off, adjust music or change channels.
And Doublepoint won’t be the last deal, if Oura CEO Tom Hale’s words are any indication.
“As we continue to build the next era of Oura, strategic acquisitions play a key role in accelerating our growth and expanding what our devices and platform can do,” he said.
Doublepoint’s team will remain primarily based in Helsinki.
Over in the U.S., Oura is set to open a manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas, this year to serve its largest enterprise customer, the Department of Defense. Oura has worked with the DoD since 2019, deploying tens of thousands of rings across all branches of the armed services for fatigue management, stress resilience and early illness detection.
The company has a commanding position in the wearables market, having sold more than 5.5 million rings. The form factor may play into it, as Gen Z and younger Millennials have shown a preference for rings over wrist-worn devices.
Though it started in the sleep category, Oura has steadily broadened its health ambitions, most recently unveiling a proprietary AI model built for women’s health. It has also been pushing deeper into clinical care, partnering with Fullscript, a platform used by more than 125,000 providers, to put smart ring biometric data directly in clinicians’ hands.
