Smart ring maker Oura agrees to buy San Francisco’s Counsel Health, an AI-and-doctor care service, for $625 million cash
The deal would let Oura Ring wearers go from a health alert in the app to a chat with an AI and a licensed doctor who can prescribe. It is expected to close by year’s end.
Oura, the company behind the Oura Ring health tracker, has agreed to buy Counsel Health, a company that combines a medical chatbot with on-call doctors, for $625 million in cash, the companies announced Tuesday. Both are based in San Francisco.
What Counsel does
Counsel calls itself an “AI-native primary care company.” It was founded by doctors and AI researchers, and its founder and chief executive is Dr. Muthu Alagappan. A patient starts by chatting with Counsel’s medical AI, which draws on medical records, earlier conversations, clinical guidelines and, with permission, data from a wearable device. At any point, the patient can bring in one of Counsel’s board-certified doctors, who can diagnose, prescribe and make referrals. Counsel sells its service to health plans, health systems, employers and other health companies, and says it can replace older options such as nurse phone lines. Counsel is not for emergencies, the companies say.
Oura has offered Counsel to some members inside its app’s Oura Labs testing area since the two companies began working together in May 2026. More than half of those Counsel users chose to share their ring data with Counsel doctors, Oura says.
Why Oura is buying it
The Oura Ring is a smart ring that tracks sleep, activity, heart rate and more than 50 other body measurements. Oura says the ring is not a medical device and is not meant to diagnose or treat illness. The company says the deal takes it “from helping members understand their health to enabling them to act on it,” so a member who sees an unusual reading can get an answer from a doctor, often within minutes, without leaving the app.
Oura cited short doctor visits, which it says last about 18 minutes in the U.S., and a projected shortage of up to 86,000 U.S. physicians by 2036. Counsel will keep serving its outside business customers, including people who do not own an Oura Ring, the companies said.
About Oura
Oura was founded in Finland in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco, with its European headquarters in Oulu, Finland. It says it has more than 6 million members. Alongside the deal, Oura reported preliminary, unaudited results: revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30 rose 153% from a year earlier to $533 million, and revenue for its fiscal year was about $1.75 billion, up 92%.
Deal terms
Oura will pay $625 million in cash, subject to price adjustments. Counsel is privately held, so there is no public share price or premium; the companies did not disclose how the money will be split among Counsel’s owners. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year, subject to customary conditions. Neither company said whether any jobs will be cut. Alagappan said he is “thrilled to join Oura.”
Sources: Counsel Health news release, Nov. 10, 2026; Oura announcement, Nov. 10, 2026.