Oura, the company behind a health tracking ring wearable, announced Tuesday it had purchased digital identification startup Proxy in an all-equity deal.
Proxy offers digital identity tech that aims to replace keys, cards, badges, apps and passwords. The startup said it had been working to include its offerings on wearable devices as well as phones.
According to reporting by Bloomberg, the deal values Proxy at $165 million. The company’s team, including its founders, will join Oura.
“This deal expands ?URA’s leadership in health wearables and signals our ambitions to integrate digital identity technology with our existing hardware and software offerings,” Oura CEO Tom Hale said in a statement. “We are thrilled to collaborate with the innovative Proxy team to expand our addressable market, paving the way for new opportunities in areas such as payments, access, security, identity and beyond, fueling future growth.”
THE LARGER TREND
Founded in Finland in 2013, Oura provides a health and fitness tracking ring that monitors sleep and activity. The latest version of the wearable, the Oura Ring Generation 3, was released in 2021, with a new design coming last year.
About a year ago, the company announced it had raised an “oversubscribed” funding round that propelled its valuation to $2.55 billion. It’s also recently launched an offering for employers and partnered with Natural Cycles, a birth control app.
Under the collaboration, customers can use the Oura Ring to track their body temperature instead of manually taking their temperature each morning. Natural Cycles uses temperature data and menstrual cycle information to determine a user’s fertile window and prevent pregnancy.
In the acquisition announcement, Oura said health data privacy is another component of the Proxy deal. Concerns about reproductive health information have become a hot topic in the wake of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
“As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve with the development of new technologies, encryption and digital identity will become pivotal to enabling data privacy across industries for a frictionless security experience,” Oura COO Michael Chapp said in a statement.
