- Qualcomm Ventures has led a $70 million funding round for Ultrahuman, increasing the company’s valuation to $365 million, 3x its 2023 valuation.
- The money was provided 11 months after a US trade decision had banned Ultrahuman’s rings following the patent dispute with Oura.
- The ring that Ultrahuman is about to launch will use Qualcomm chips and will function as both a game controller and a health tracker.
In October, Ultrahuman lost access to its largest market, the US, after the US International Trade Commission found that it had infringed on Oura’s patents. By spring, Ultrahuman’s main product, the Ring Air, was no longer sold in the US.
Qualcomm Ventures is leading Ultrahuman’s $70 million Series C funding round, which has increased the company’s valuation to $365 million, roughly three times its 2023 valuation.
The $70 million financing consists of $65 million in equity and $5 million in debt. Alpha Wave, Blume Ventures, and Nexus Venture Partners are among the investors who had previously invested in Ultrahuman’s 2024 Series B.
New investors include Labcorp and Alteria Capital. Qualcomm Ventures has previously invested in successful hardware companies such as Ring and Fitbit, and has more recently supported Ethernovia and Zuddl.
From ITC ban to recovery
The patent decision was a serious blow to Ultrahuman since about half of its users were in the United States. Before it could re-enter the US market, the company had to spend several months redesigning the Ring Pro.
Mohit Kumar, the company’s founder and CEO, states that demand for the new device in the United States is 18 to 20 times greater than the amount the company can supply. He anticipates achieving the same level of US sales as before the ban next quarter and then tripling those sales within a year.
Kumar and co-founder Vatsal Singhal founded Ultrahuman in 2019 following the sale of their previous logistics business, Runnr, to Zomato. Tech Funding News first reported on Ultrahuman in 2022, when the Ring was still a specialist product for metabolic tracking. Former Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal made an early investment in Ultrahuman before launching his own wearable company, Temple, this year.
A ring designed to run software
The money being provided involves more than simply restoring normal conditions. Ultrahuman is developing a new ring that will use Qualcomm chips alongside the Nordic Semiconductor chips it currently uses. This will enable more processing to take place on the ring itself, rather than relying on a phone or the cloud.
Certain new features will be made available prior to the launch of the new hardware. Ultrahuman intends to release a software update for its existing Ring Air and Ring Pro models by the end of September.
This update will enable the rings to function as game controllers and to connect with AI applications. It will also permit third-party developers to create apps for the platform.
Funding, market position, and future plans
Ultrahuman states that its annual revenue run rate is $140 million, a 45% increase from last year, and the company intends to reach $200 million by January 2027. It has sold approximately 800,000 rings, up from 700,000 units sold in February, and 12% of its users subscribe to the PowerPlugs software add-ons. The company is not yet profitable.
This puts Ultrahuman several years behind Oura, which is reportedly planning a US stock market listing this month at a valuation of over $16 billion—more than 40 times Ultrahuman’s current valuation. Whoop, a wrist-worn rival, is valued at $10.1 billion. Samsung’s Galaxy Ring stands out because it does not require a subscription.
In 2025, the global smart ring market was valued at approximately $697.6 million and is expected to increase to $7.8 billion by 2035. Oura holds a dominant position with a 76.4% market share, with Ultrahuman as the closest competitor.
It has not yet been established whether a smart ring can replace a phone for anything other than notifications. Ultrahuman is asking users to place their trust in a four-gram device, even though both its computing power and battery life are limited. Even though Oura is having its shares offered based on its tracking capabilities, Ultrahuman intends to compete by providing more than just tracking.
