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Ōura has entered into an agreement to acquire Finnish personalised metabolic health firm Veri.
Veri’s technology guides users to the optimal foods and habits for their bodies through an app that is enabled by continuous glucose monitors (CGM). Oura is the maker of Oura Ring, a smart ring that delivers personalised health data, insights and daily guidance.
The acquisition comes as metabolic health is a key area of interest for Oura, with 97% of its members expressing interest in understanding how the food they eat impacts their health. In a survey of Oura’s members, 13% indicated that they have worn a CGM and 53% are interested in wearing a CGM in the next 12 months.
Tom Hale, Ōura’s CEO, said: “Metabolic health is the natural next dimension of the Oura Ring holistic health experience, and one that our customers have told us they want. Ōura started in sleep and has always had a vision of expanding to support all aspects of health. Over time, we’ve built out our offerings across key behaviours like activity and added new health pillars like cardiovascular health, stress and resilience and women’s health.”
Hale continued: “Metabolic health is an important next horizon and the team at Veri brings deep experience in that space. We look forward to integrating its expertise as we explore and develop new offerings that add value to our members' lives as we build the best holistic health companion.”
“Today, Oura Ring is a standalone product, but we see a world where the product experience includes other health data inputs and sensors, such as CGMs, factoring into the data and insights presented within the Oura App. The expertise of Veri’s team will help accelerate this vision, strengthening our product and opening up new avenues for metabolic health offerings.”
As a first step in integrating metabolic health into the ŌURA experience, this autumn, Ōura will introduce a new feature called ‘Meals’, which will help members track meal timing and map it to their chronotype to understand how and when we eat can impact health metrics like sleep, stress and recovery.
Meals will be available in Oura Labs, an opt-in innovation hub within the Oura App that allows members to test features in development and provide feedback.
Anttoni Aniebonam, Veri’s CEO and co-founder, commented: “When most people think about metabolic health, they think of weight loss and diabetes, but, like Ōura, we've always had a vision centred around helping people understand their health more deeply. By bringing our experience in metabolic health to Ōura, a like-minded Finnish brand, we have the opportunity to influence meaningful change in even more people’s lives at a faster rate than we’d be able to on our own. Together, we’ll explore how metabolic awareness can create a more complete picture of your overall health and provide guidance to help Oura Members achieve their personal goals, whatever they may be.”
According to Ōura, a ‘significant’ portion of Veri’s team, including its three founders, will join Ōura as employees. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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