Oura Agrees to Buy AI Primary Care Startup Counsel Health for $625 Million in Cash

The acquisition takes Oura a step beyond tracking its members' sleep, heart rate and other biometrics and into delivering medical care itself. Counsel's service has been built into the Oura app since June: members can put questions to Counsel's AI and escalate to a board-certified physician, usually within minutes, according to the release. The two companies now plan to extend that arrangement into preventive care, acute care such as prescriptions for short-term problems, and specialty and chronic care in areas including reproductive, ageing and cardiometabolic health.

It is also a large cash commitment from a company that recently stepped back from the public markets. Oura postponed indefinitely an initial public offering of up to $2.2 billion a few weeks ago, citing "uncertainty in the IPO market," TechCrunch noted.

"Oura helps members understand their physiology and, with Counsel, they can take action on their health across a range of needs, from quick questions and prescriptions to lab results, chronic care, and referrals," Oura chief executive Tom Hale said in the release.

Counsel was founded by physicians and AI researchers. Its clinical system uses specialised agents for tasks such as taking a medical history, retrieving clinical guidelines, reviewing records and detecting emergencies, while its doctors work through a proprietary interface the company calls the Clinician Cockpit. Besides consumers, it sells to health plans, health systems, digital health companies and employers, and Oura said Counsel will keep serving existing and new enterprise customers after the deal. Oura executive chairman David Shuman said those partners could take the service to millions of people outside Oura's own membership, widening the market Oura can address.

"At Counsel, we've built medical AI around trust, safety and responsibility, keeping physicians in the loop for clinical decisions," said Muthu Alagappan, Counsel's founder and chief executive. Bloomberg reported that Alagappan will join Oura as chief clinical AI officer, along with Counsel's 70 employees.

The price is large relative to the capital Counsel has raised. The startup closed a $25 million Series A a year ago, led by Andreessen Horowitz and GV, and PitchBook estimates its total funding at $36 million, according to TechCrunch. Oura cited survey results in which more than 90% of Counsel users said their Oura data helped them get better care, and said members who saw a Counsel physician rated the experience 4.6 out of 5.

Oura used the announcement to publish financial figures it would normally have disclosed in a prospectus. Revenue for the quarter ended September 30 rose 153% from a year earlier to $533 million, with adjusted EBITDA of $87 million, a 16% margin. Revenue for fiscal 2026 was about $1.75 billion, up 92%, and the company said it has more than six million members. The figures are preliminary and unaudited. Oura was valued at $11 billion after a $900 million late-stage round in October 2025.

The company faces growing competition in smart rings from rivals including RingConn and Ultrahuman. Its release also states that the Oura Ring is not a medical device and is not intended to diagnose, treat or monitor medical conditions.

Oura said it expects the deal to close before the end of the calendar year, subject to customary conditions. TechCrunch's report gave the expected closing as before the end of 2027.