Oura is paying $625 million for Counsel Health, a startup whose AI assistant answers medical questions and can pass a user to a physician. The maker of the Oura Ring expects the sale to be completed before 2026 ends.
Oura revealed the deal on 10 November with its quarterly earnings. Counsel’s assistant has sat in the Oura app since earlier this year and replies using readings from the user’s ring. Under the new plan, a chat that needs a human continues with a doctor. In practice the idea is that a worry about, say, poor sleep or a raised resting heart rate starts with the assistant reading the ring’s recent figures and can end in a conversation with a clinician, all without leaving the app.
Counsel describes itself as primary care built around AI. Its doctors number about 50, and chief executive Muthu Alagappan says he intends to recruit more. Oura’s chief executive, Tom Hale, says the aim is a loop of wearable data, clinical AI and clinicians, so people can have questions answered or ongoing conditions followed.
Counsel’s 70 staff join Oura, and Alagappan takes the title chief clinical AI officer. Oura’s announcement lists three priorities: preventive care, acute care for short-term problems, and specialist or chronic care, with reproductive and cardiometabolic health as the examples.
Counsel will carry on selling its platform to health plans, health systems, consumer health companies and employers, so it is not turning into an Oura-only service. For ring owners, the visible changes will come inside the app after the sale closes, as Counsel’s team starts building on Oura’s own health features.
