Oura agreed to buy medical AI startup Counsel Health for $625 million this week. The smart ring maker announced the deal alongside its quarterly earnings results on Monday evening. Oura had already added Counsel’s AI chatbot to its app earlier this year.
Counsel Health describes itself as an “AI-native primary care company.” Its app produces AI-generated answers and insights from wearable health data. Users can then continue into a conversation with one of the company’s in-house physicians. The planned deal should close before the end of 2026, according to Oura.
Chief executive Tom Hale told Bloomberg the purchase fits a wider plan. Oura wants to connect wearables, clinical AI, and real doctor access around biometric data. The goal is to answer health questions and monitor ongoing conditions with better context.
The chatbot already lets Oura users reach a real doctor from inside the app. Answers can draw on a user’s own biometric readings instead of generic advice. The companies named three priorities for the combined service. Preventative care and acute care for short-term problems come first. Specialty and chronic care, including reproductive and cardiometabolic health, comes third.
Counsel Health chief executive Muthu Alagappan told Bloomberg the company plans to expand its physician network. That network currently includes about 50 on-demand doctors. Counsel’s 70 employees will join Oura when the transaction closes. Alagappan becomes Oura’s chief clinical AI officer as part of the same deal.
Counsel will keep selling its medical AI platform outside Oura’s customer base. Enterprise partners include health plans, health systems, consumer health organizations, and employers. Oura’s rings already lean hard into health tracking, including cardio effort and VO2 max estimates added in October.
The acquisition shows how wearable companies want a bigger role in care. Collecting heart rate and sleep data is becoming a commodity across smart rings. Pairing that data with clinical guidance and paid medical access could become the next differentiator for hardware makers.
Source: The Verge — Oura is acquiring medical AI chatbot startup Counsel Health
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