Oura’s IPO Could Become a Watershed Moment for Women’s Health

Oura is a women’s health company. There, we said it. Not in a “rah rah femtech” way, but based on real user demographics and use cases. It also may be one of the biggest. Oura’s CEO shared that it was on track to double to $1B in revenues at the end of last year, while targeting $1.5B in sales for 2026.

If Progyny in the fertility space is considered a women’s health company, which the market widely perceives it is, then Oura certainly meets the definition. Progyny is considered a women’s health company, even though fertility-related challenges are related to men’s health roughly 50% of the time. But women’s health isn’t confined to childbearing or menopause. A women’s health care company should include cardiovascular health, musculoskeletal health, oncology, and more, because women may have a very different experience as patients versus men. And Oura, as a wearables company, is building a vast data set that pertains specifically to women that may fill in many of the gaps in care that exist for women. 

Oura monitors heart health, glucose levels, and sleep, which are all important to its female users, and it has gone deep on features tracking menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause. It also inked deals with women’s telehealth platforms, so that patients can have their Oura data directly in their electronic medical record. And one cannot ignore that 59% of its users are women, per a 2024 release. At this point, it’s likely higher than that. 

As such, it represents the first women’s health company to confidentially file for an IPO since Progyny in 2019. According to news reports, the number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed public offering are still not determined. While this is a market for splashy IPOs, it hasn’t been the kindest environment for health tech, med tech, or DTC consumer tech brands. 

What distinguishes Oura is that it’s one of the few, if not the only, wearables companies that skews female. It is highly unusual in the wearables space, and blazed a trail for new female-focused wearables such as Lumia and Incora. This dearth makes sense because it’s more difficult to establish a woman’s baseline metrics. As biohacker Bryan Johnson recently stated, it takes 3 months to account for cycle-driven fluctuations vs. 1-2 weeks for men, and that adds complexity in tracking and interpreting the data points.