Oura hires first CIO and SVP of AI ahead of IPO

Oura named two senior technology executives on Thursday as the smart ring company moves to expand its AI-driven health features ahead of an expected initial public offering, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Sanjay Chandra joins as Oura's first chief information officer and Han Chiu as its first senior vice president of AI and software engineering, Chief Executive Officer Tom Hale told The Wall Street Journal. The pair will work on AI-powered health insights and the data infrastructure that supports them.

Before joining Oura, Chandra served for five years at Lucid Motors as vice president of information technology, a role that spanned the automaker's design, manufacturing, supply chain, and logistics operations. He will report to Chief Financial Officer Sean Brecker and focus on data architecture and governance.

"With Lucid, you collect so much intelligent information from the car. And now here we are collecting information about the health of a member and leveraging that. There's a lot of resemblances," Chandra said.

Chiu was most recently chief technology officer at digital therapeutics company Click Therapeutics, where he led an AI transformation. He will report to Chief Operating Officer Michael Chapp and oversee the development and training of agents, AI models, and algorithms that surface insights and advice in the Oura app.

Chiu is also tasked with making sure the company's commitment to safety and security guardrails keeps pace with, rather than constrains, its product ambitions.

The hires reflect Oura's broader ambition to build specialized AI models for specific health domains. A recently launched women's health AI model — built on a base of peer-reviewed medical literature and vetted by Oura's clinicians — illustrates the direction the company is headed, offering tailored guidance on conditions ranging from irregular cycles to perimenopause. Hale said the goal is to extend that approach to additional subpopulations.

"Our vision is that we want domain expert models, not some cloud model trained on Reddit, making health decisions about you," Hale said.

Oura, which is valued at $11 billion, filed a draft IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year, with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Allen & Co., and Jefferies Financial Group among the banks lined up to manage the listing. The company has not set a share count or offering price. Paid membership is expected to exceed five million this quarter, and cumulative ring sales have topped 5.5 million units.

Screenless wearable competitor Whoop carries a valuation of $10.1 billion.