Welcome to AI Health Uncut, a brutally honest newsletter on AI, innovation, and the state of the healthcare market. If you’d like to sign up to receive issues over email, you can do so here.
Important Disclosure. This publication is written and distributed by an independent journalist. It is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and related principles of free expression. Those protections do not relieve me of the obligation to report accurately, and I take that obligation seriously. I have no financial interest, long or short, in Oura, Whoop, Ultrahuman, Dexcom, Apple, Google, or any other company mentioned here. I did not contact Oura Inc., its subsidiaries, or any of their officers, directors, agents, or representatives for comment prior to publication. No such request was warranted. The factual assertions in this article are drawn from three categories of material. First, publicly available sources, including Oura’s Form S-1 registration statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Oura’s own published materials, and contemporaneous press coverage, each of which I have hyperlinked at the point of reference. Second, my own independent research and analysis. Third, first-hand accounts voluntarily provided to me by Oura members regarding their personal experience with the product. I present those member accounts as reported experiences, not as findings of fact, and they have not been independently verified by Oura or by any third party. Where I express opinions, interpretations, inferences, or conclusions, they should be understood as such. This article is for informational and opinion purposes only and should not be construed as financial or investment advice.
🍁 Happy Labor Day weekend! 🇺🇸☀️
I hope you’re getting at least a little time to unplug, spend time with family and friends, enjoy the last stretch of summer, and avoid thinking about healthcare AI, venture capital, IPOs, or whatever other madness usually fills our feeds.
I, apparently, failed at that last part. So here we are. 🙂
On Thursday, September 3, 2026, Oura filed its S-1 with the SEC, the detailed registration statement companies file before going public. Ticker “OURA” on Nasdaq. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and 15 more banks on the cover. The reported target: a $16B+ valuation and up to $3B raised.
Nice timing, too. While the entire financial internet argues over whose IPO lands first, Anthropic’s or OpenAI’s (Polymarket says Anthropic, 96%), Oura is trying to quietly squeeze a $16B ring through the side door before anyone looks up from the betting slip. 😉
But first, a thank you message to my paid subscribers. I make a fair amount of my work available for free. But research-intensive investigations, reviews, and analyses take time, effort, and resources. So I’m enormously grateful to everyone who chooses to support this work with a paid subscription, and especially to my Founding Members.
Founding Members receive some additional benefits, of course. But more importantly, they are supporting the broader mission behind AI Health Uncut. Their support also helps make it possible for me to keep much of my work accessible to students, people between jobs, and others who may not be able to afford a subscription right now.
One thing Substack offers paid subscribers is the option, once they subscribe, to share a few thoughts about why they decided to support the publication. They can do that publicly or privately. I’ve received so many of these messages, and most of them have been incredibly kind. Here’s a recent one that particularly stood out to me, shared with the author’s permission, of course:
Thank you for such kind words, Raj Mummadi. 🙏
OK, back to Oura’s IPO ambitions…
A word on my credentials. I used to be a quant investor, not without some serious mistakes. These days, I’m an independent journalist, healthcare analyst, and healthcare AI startup founder. So I think I’m somewhat (maybe? 😉) qualified to read this S-1, and, as my prediction record shows, equally qualified to be wrong about it. 😉
I’ll say the nice thing first, because it’s true. I love the Oura ring. And Oura is the rare healthtech company that shows up to its IPO with $1.4B in trailing revenue and an actual net profit.
Then I read the risk factors. Page after page, the company that sells “predictive health” tells the SEC what it will not promise you. That’s pretty much the article in a nutshell. 😉
🚨 TL;DR:
1. Subscriptions are 20% of revenue, not the business. The ring buyer is the subscriber.
2. The profit is real, new, and thin. Fiscal 2025 net income was $12,000. Not $12M. Not $120M. Not $1.2B.
3. Early investors took $1.09B off the table before the public got a turn.
4. My 21-question IPO checklist: better than most donkeys, three red flags around the IPO itself.
5. Great people. Shaky business. Those are two different sentences.
6. “Predictive” heart warnings that don’t warn, per members I’ve talked to.
7. Respiratory tracking that misses asthma. A stress graph that can’t tell a catastrophe from a Tuesday.
8. My verdict.
If you cannot afford this article, perhaps you’re a student or currently between jobs, please reach out. That’s precisely why I created the AI Health Uncut Founding Member Club. Thanks to generous donations from these wonderful individuals, I’m able to provide access to anyone who needs it.
