By: Michael Chapp, COO

Today we are excited to share that Oura has hit a thrilling milestone—our community is now powered by one million rings. We are grateful to all of you who have joined us on this journey toward better health. Your support and feedback have been instrumental in getting us here and we do not take that for granted. We recognize we have not always been perfect, and we continue to make strides every day to deliver on our commitment to you and our mission: to empower everyone to own their inner potential and realize health as a daily practice. 

On the heels of Sleep Awareness Week, it’s awe-inspiring to consider that we’ve delivered one million rings and recorded over 2.5 billion hours of sleep. I’m reminded of a quote from Matthew Walker, Professor of Neuroscience & Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oura Advisor:

“I was once fond of saying, “sleep is the third pillar of good health, alongside diet and exercise.” I have changed my tune. Sleep is more than a pillar; it is the foundation on which the other two health bastions sit. Take away the bedrock of sleep, or weaken it just a little, and careful eating or physical exercise become less than effective.”

Dr. Walker’s perspective aligns with how we think about sleep too. Oura was the first wearable to focus on sleep because we knew from Day 1 how much it impacts other aspects of our health. And what we measure, we can improve. Research shows a direct correlation between chronic sleep deprivation and disease. Good sleep improves nearly all aspects of life, including immunity, performance, and mental health. With this in mind, we designed Oura to not only be the most accurate sleep wearable, but also a tool you could use to take more active control of your health daily. It’s been heartening to hear these stories from so many of you every day: 

“If I hadn’t decided to get my Oura Ring, I don’t know how I would have even begun to fix my sleep. It’s hard to fix something that you don’t know anything about. I could feel what my bad sleep was doing to my body, but Oura helped me see what it was doing. Understanding what was happening to my body gave me the push I needed to start making changes.” – Monica

“I’ve always had trouble clearing my mind and battled anxiety each time I went to bed. I was tired of not feeling refreshed each morning…Oura has motivated me to adjust my workout schedule, to include timely recovery—leading to a healthier mind and body…if I could leave someone with a single tip to help combat mental strain, it would be to meditate before bed.” – Gabriel 

Beyond the feature benefits you have hopefully experienced firsthand as an Oura member, your involvement has also had a big impact on scientific research. Nearly one hundred thousand of you elected to participate in research studies with the Universities of California, San Francisco, Berkeley, San Diego, and the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, among others. Through all of your contributions, you have helped advance science in the areas of COVID-19 illness detection and vaccine response, and women’s health and fertility. Since 2015, Oura has been cited in over 3,000 publications, and this is in no small part due to your support.

Using the findings from independent research, we’ve also developed tools like our Health Risk Management platform, enabling many to get back to work more safely. Several businesses are now offering the Oura Ring to employees as a wellness benefit that can help improve staff health and wellbeing, manage stress, detect early signs of sickness, and even maximize productivity. Oura partnerships with the NBA, WNBA, UFC, NASCAR, World Surf League, and USA Surfing are also great examples of Oura’s application in measuring athletic performance and recovery. 

I hope you have had an opportunity to check out many of the new features we’ve added with the launch of Gen3 such as Daytime Heart Rate, Restorative Time, Live Heart Rate, Cycle Insights, and Explore content, featuring new meditation, breathwork, and sleep content. You can continue to expect even more from us in the coming months and years as we release additional features, content, and research studies. We’re also aware that Workout Heart Rate, Blood Oxygen Sensing, and an updated Sleep Staging algorithm are among your most-requested features, and we’re committed to delivering them to you this year. We’re just getting started, and now we have one million more reasons to continue to deliver on our mission.

Often when we talk about tech, we speak in terms of bits and bytes. But we believe it’s important to think about the humans wearing and powering the Oura Ring. One million rings means a million dreamers, a million beating hearts, a million more empowered lives, and limitless human potential.

Thank you for joining us on this journey. I’m so excited to discover where the future leads us. 

–Michael Chapp