When you buy through affiliate links in our content, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn 
Smart ring company Oura has announced it is acquiring smart glucose monitor brand Veri for an undisclosed amount.
Oura may be looking to add insights about food habits for users of its latest and upcoming smart rings. This is suggested by the brand’s freshly announced acquisition of a Finnish startup Veri, which is marketed to offer “personalized metabolic” insights through its food products. Most of Veri’s team, including three of its founders, will now be a part of Oura. The finances of the deal remained undisclosed.
Veri offers tailored nutrition programs for users, mostly to help them lose weight and lead healthier lives. Its flagship product is a continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) skin patch, which is used alongside an app that estimates your calorie intake by analyzing images of food you eat.
Announcing the acquisition, Oura noted, “Metabolic health is the natural next dimension of the Oura Ring holistic health experience” and it is based on what the customers want. With this integration, the company could be looking to win back some of the customers swayed by Samsung’s recently launched Galaxy Ring.
We can safely assume the acquisition allows existing and new Veri users to view their health data harmonizing with that from their Oura Ring. According to a survey Oura conducted, 53% of its existing users are “interested in wearing a CGM in the next 12 months.” The smart ring leader incorporating glucose monitoring into its smart rings seems less likely at the moment, especially since the fit-tech industry has yet to crack consumer-approved non-invasive methods of glucose monitoring.
The upcoming Oura Ring 4 does not seem to integrate any specific technology for glucose monitoring through optical, electrodermal, or other methods of estimation. That suggests Oura may work on a unified solution in the future, but not necessarily at the moment.
The Veri branding will be wrapped up by the end of the year, but it is unclear how Oura plans to migrate data and existing users to its platforms instead—and if users will be required to purchase an Oura Ring or a new subscription to continue using their smart glucose patches. To begin, Oura will include Meals tracking as a new optional feature to “help members track meal timing and map it to their chronotype to understand how and when we eat can impact health metrics like sleep, stress, and recovery.”
Although not explicitly stated, it’s clear that Oura is looking to leverage a pro-health image by including other vital metrics such as metabolic data to keep users from leaving its platform for a more affordable alternative in the form of the Galaxy Ring, which is now a more enticing option for Galaxy Watch users.
