Health wearables are booming, with both Oura and Whoop eyeing IPOs, but investors remain cautious after Fitbit's struggles and low consumer hardware margins
Oura and Whoop are eyeing IPOs at heady valuations — From sleep scores to heart rate, our biology now arrives packaged as a dashboard.LinkedIn:David WainerLinkedIn:David Wainer:Do you wear a tracker like Oura, Fitbit, or Whoop? — I do. And honestly, it's been useful. Seeing what affects my sleep, how my body is recovering after a hard workout. …
Context & Ripple Effects
Oura’s reported confidential IPO filing follows a rapid valuation climb: related coverage put it at $800M in 2021, $5.2B by early 2025, and $11B in September 2025. Its positioning has emphasized broader health and sleep tracking rather than fitness alone.
Whoop’s earlier financings paired a tracker with a subscription health-coaching app, while Fitbit’s public-market history is the cautionary comparison cited in the coverage. The prospective listings therefore test whether recurring-service models can earn a different valuation from standalone consumer hardware.
First-order effects
- Oura and Whoop face investor scrutiny over whether their valuations reflect durable health-data and subscription businesses rather than hardware sales alone.
- Fitbit’s struggles and low device margins become an explicit benchmark for how public investors assess the two companies’ IPO narratives.
Second-order effects
- Prospective public-market buyers are likely to place greater weight on subscription attachment and retention, pushing Oura and Whoop to demonstrate that their software and coaching layers support economics beyond device launches.
- Other wearable makers seeking funding or exits may encounter a sharper divide between businesses that can show recurring revenue and those primarily dependent on selling hardware.
Third-order effects
- If Oura and Whoop can sustain premium valuations after listing, the wearable category may increasingly be valued as a recurring health-service market; if not, Fitbit’s experience will reinforce hardware-margin skepticism.
- The outcome could clarify whether specialized health wearables can remain independent public companies or must seek scale and distribution through larger consumer-tech ecosystems.
The trend: Health wearables are moving from fitness gadgets toward subscription-backed personal health platforms, with IPO markets testing whether that shift changes the economics of the category.