Ultrahuman bets smart rings become computers in a $70M Qualcomm round

Ultrahuman is a Bengaluru startup that went from continuous glucose monitors to smart rings, and by 2026 it had sold roughly 800,000 rings. In September 2026 it raised $70 million — $65 million primary equity and $5 million debt — at a $365 million valuation, with Qualcomm Ventures and diagnostics giant Labcorp among the investors. The round is a bet that the ring's future is not more health tracking but becoming a small computer on the finger.

Founder and CEO Mohit Kumar's argument: every ring today is a tracker that measures heart rate, movement and sleep, while the opportunity is software running on the device itself. Ultrahuman is working with Qualcomm on a ring built around Qualcomm silicon, alongside its existing Nordic chips, and plans to open the device to third-party developers. Tested uses include working as a game controller, a pointer, a car key and an interface for AI applications — a controller that also reads heart rate and temperature.

Some of the platform features were scheduled to ship by the end of September 2026 as a software update to the existing Ring Air and Ring Pro, before the Qualcomm-powered hardware arrives. The company's health business was growing alongside the bet: a $140 million annual revenue run rate, up about 45% year over year, with roughly 12% of users paying for its PowerPlugs software subscriptions and blood-testing and CGM products expanding internationally.

The US market — about 45% of revenue — was recovering from an Oura patent fight: an ITC import ban kept Ring Air out of the US for much of the previous year, and Ultrahuman re-entered in March 2026 with the redesigned Ring Pro, where demand was running 18 to 20 times available supply. The company said it might not be profitable in 2026 after heavy spending on physical retail, brand and clinical research, and saw 2028 as the earliest IPO window after establishing about eight quarters of profitability.