Tom Hale, Oura CEO, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the latest $900 million funding round, company growth outlook, whether the company plans to go public anytime soon, state of the wearables competition, future of wearable technologies, and more. For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: https://cnb.cx/42d859g
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Questions asked in this interview
8
0:18So Tom, $11 billion when you got there, what was it?
0:57But when you first got to work, what was the evaluation of the company?
1:09At what point do you say to yourself, do you want to be a public company?
1:39When you say you've got work to do, what kind of work?
3:33In terms of the economics of the business, what kind of margin do you get off of the device itself versus what really has become a services business because you charge a monthly fee for most users of the ring?
Okay, here we go. I told you my readiness score. What was it, a 73?
Was it?
Normally I like to be in the 80s. Oh, no. Today I'm better than that. 76, 76. But still not great. We'll see what this guy's readiness score is this morning.
Wearable tech company Oura announcing a $900 million Series B funding round, bringing its valuation to $11 billion. We've watched this company's valuation rise now for many, many years. Joining us now first on CNBC is Tom Hale. He is the CEO of Oura. Of course, they make the wearable rings. And we always discuss how good or bad people's readiness is in the morning. So Tom, $11 billion when you got there, what was it?
My readiness score today is 80. And if I did it, if I thought about the day that we actually closed all the arrangements, I guess my readiness was about 11 billion.
Wow. And so look, one of the big questions that I imagine people are going to ask is this is still a private entity. At what point do you say to yourself, do you want to be a public company?
You know, we want to focus on our customers. We want to continue investing in innovation. I think we're very happy to be a private company right now. We don't have to report earnings monthly or quarterly or every six months. But at the end of the day, I think we want to be ready to go public when the time is right, but we've got some work to do before we get there.
You know, we're scaling the business so fast and adding new employees, new business, expanding internationally, introducing new products. I think we just want to stay focused on that and not let the distraction of being a public company affect what we can do for our customers. Our mission is to improve human health, and that's where we want to spend our time and energy.
So there's, you know, this is an emerging space. There are a whole bunch of competitors. You do it, I would argue, best on the finger as a ring. There's the Whoop. Apple's got the watch. Samsung and others have other devices. Garmin's now in it. You know, so many people are trying to play in this space. How do you see the competition over time?
You know, what's interesting is I think every American should have a wearable. It's part and parcel of living a healthy lifestyle and fostering healthy behaviors. Honestly, we know that the ring is the most accurate and the measuring from the finger is the best place to measure for long-term health management, health measurement. But anyway, if you can understand that everyone should have a wearable, I think we're supportive of that. Now, that being said, with this money that we've raised, I think we're going to head towards investing more and more in AI features and more and more in healthcare and more and more in international expansion. We think we can cover the world and put a ring on any of your fingers. We've only sold 5.5 million in the last, you know, ten years of the company's life. We think we'll sell another five in the next, you know, year. This category is exploding. And mostly what's interesting is that we're growing roughly twice as fast as we have been in the past. And we're going to continue to gain share from other wearables. And I think that's just a function of the ring being comfortable, being attractive. This is our new ceramic model. People like to have expression with their wearable. And also that we're going to see expansion as the healthcare market and the healthcare industry adjusts to the reality of everybody having a wearable.
11 more exchanges in this transcript
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Hale, T. (2025, October 14). Oura CEO Tom Hale: We've 'got some work to do' before going public as a company [Interview transcript]. CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1435904/
MLA
Tom Hale. "Oura CEO Tom Hale: We've 'got some work to do' before going public as a company." CNBC Television, 14 Oct. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1435904/.
BibTeX
@misc{hale2025_1435904,
author = {Tom Hale},
title = {Oura CEO Tom Hale: We've 'got some work to do' before going public as a company},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {oct},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1435904/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
