Ultrahuman raises $70M from Qualcomm Ventures to add AI and gaming to its smart ring

Ultrahuman has pulled in a $70 million Series C led by Qualcomm Ventures, lifting its valuation to $365 million, about three times where it sat in 2023. The round is a mix of $65 million in equity and $5 million in debt, with returning backers like Alpha Wave, Blume Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners, plus new names including Labcorp and Alteria Capital.

That money lands after a rough year. In October, the US International Trade Commission found Ultrahuman had infringed Oura’s patents, and by spring the Ring Air was no longer being sold in the US. The company says about half its users were in the United States, so losing that market hurt hard. Before it can truly get back in, Ultrahuman spent months redesigning the Ring Pro.

Now it is pushing in a different direction, too. The next ring will use Qualcomm chips alongside Nordic Semiconductor chips, letting more of the work happen on the ring itself instead of offloading it to a phone or the cloud. Ultrahuman also plans a software update for the Ring Air and Ring Pro by the end of September, turning them into game controllers, linking them with AI apps and opening the platform to third-party developers.

The growth story is real enough on paper. Ultrahuman says its annual revenue run rate is $140 million, up 45% from last year, and it wants to reach $200 million by January 2027. It has sold about 800,000 rings and says 12% of users pay for PowerPlugs add-ons, but the company is still not profitable. And it is still chasing Oura from a long way back: Oura is reportedly heading toward a US listing this month at more than $16 billion, while Ultrahuman is trying to convince people that a four-gram ring can do more than count steps and sleep.