Oura And Whoop Both Want To Go Public – Will They Succeed Where Fitbit Stumbled?

Wearables have been the next big thing in tech for so long that the phrase has practically lost its meaning.

Fitbit was supposed to prove it, then got sold to Google for $2.1 billion in 2021 after years of declining relevance. Now two of the category’s biggest names, Oura and Whoop, are both heading toward the public markets at roughly the same time, and at valuations that would have seemed implausible for a fitness gadget company a decade ago.

Oura confidentially filed for an IPO with the SEC in May, after closing a Series E that valued the Finnish smart ring maker at $11 billion. Whoop raised $575 million in a Series G in March at a $10.1 billion valuation, widely read as a precursor to its own listing. Both companies are now profitable, both have built recurring revenue streams, and both are about to find out whether public investors believe wearables have fixed the business model that sank their predecessor.

What Killed Fitbit, Really

Fitbit’s problem was never really about the hardware – it was about what happened after someone bought it.

The company used to just sell devices at a 20–30% profit margin and didn’t have much of a reason to stay in touch with customers afterward. There was no real software layer, no subscription, nothing pulling people back into the product after the initial novelty wore off. Retention dropped, and Fitbit found itself competing on design and marketing against Apple and Samsung, companies with vastly more resources and a much wider product range behind their wearables.

That’s the trap both Oura and Whoop appear to have avoided, though they’ve taken different routes to do it.

Two Different Bets On The Same Idea

Oura sells a smart ring, priced between $299 and $549, and requires a membership of $5.99 a month or $69.99 a year to unlock its full set of insights. About 80% of its revenue still comes from hardware, but the subscription portion carries gross margins of 70 to 80%, compared with around 45% on the rings themselves. The blended result is an overall gross margin above 50%, more than double what a pure hardware company like Fitbit could achieve.

Oura also reports 88% annual retention, against an industry benchmark closer to 70%, and has grown revenue from $15 million in 2020 to roughly $500 million in 2024, with projections above $1 billion for 2025. Whoop has gone further in the other direction – the hardware itself is free. The entire business is the subscription, priced between $199 and $359 a year, which the company now reports as over $1 billion in annual recurring revenue, with bookings roughly doubling in 2025.

Where Oura sells a piece of jewellery with a chip in it, Whoop sells access to data, deliberately stripping out the screen and notifications that define most other wearables. The positioning is different too – Oura leans into wellness and design, describing itself as “jewellery over tech,” while Whoop is built for performance athletes and trainers who care about strain and recovery scores rather than how the device looks on their wrist.

What both have in common is the thing Fitbit never had: a reason for the customer relationship to continue past the unboxing. Whether that’s framed as a ring you wear every day or a subscription you pay for every year, both companies have built margins that look more like software businesses than hardware ones, and both reached profitability before attempting to go public, which Fitbit never managed.

Why Investors Are Still Cautious

None of this means the IPOs are guaranteed to go well.

Consumer hardware as a category still carries a reputation problem with public investors, who have watched plenty of hyped device makers struggle once growth slows and novelty fades. Fitness trackers typically run at 15 to 25% margins, premium smartwatches somewhere between 30 and 50%, and investors pricing these IPOs will be doing so on the assumption that the software and subscription layers can keep growing as a share of revenue, not simply hold steady.

There’s also the question of how much of this growth is durable versus pandemic-era enthusiasm for health tracking that hasn’t fully tested itself against an economic downturn. Whoop’s 60% international sales and Oura’s dominant position, with around 80% of the smart ring category, both suggest true market depth over a single-market fad, but public markets will want to see that translate into multiple quarters of consistent numbers before fully buying in.

What This Means For The Wearables Space

For health wearable firms observing from the sidelines, the timing holds weight.

Following a dormant period, the public market for health hardware and digital health appears to be rebounding. MedTech IPOs saw a significant uptick in 2025, raising roughly $1.1 billion across eight listings, a sharp rise from the $112 million raised by a single IPO in 2024. Oura’s upcoming debut is being touted as one of the most valuable European IPOs of the year – a landmark achievement for a sector that has long struggled to build hardware companies with true global reach.

If Oura and Whoop both list successfully, and at valuations that hold up over their first few quarters as public companies, it sends a signal that the recurring-revenue wearables model isn’t only a story investors tell themselves during private funding rounds. It’s a model that works in public markets too, and one that smaller health wearables companies building toward their own future exits will be watching very closely.