Oura Restructures Tech Leadership in AI Push

Good Morning. Oura has created two new senior technology roles to further develop its popular health-tracking ring as it heads toward an IPO.

Sanjay Chandra is the company’s first chief information officer and Han Chiu is its first senior vice president of AI and software engineering, CEO Tom Hale told me in an exclusive interview. They will help the company develop AI-powered health insights and the underlying data infrastructure that supports them, as well as bolstering the company’s credibility with established health players, Hale said.

Oura gathers a range of health data including heart rate and sleep patterns and uses them to develop predictions and personalized insights in areas such as impending illness and menstrual cycles.

“To do that effectively, with privacy, in a way that’s regulatory compliant, there’s a tremendous amount of infrastructure,” Hale said. “We’ve been doing it; it’s just now we’re doing it at the next level.”

At the same time, the company is looking to build more of its own proprietary AI models for specific domains, similar to a women’s health AI model it just rolled out. The model is designed to give individualized guidance on women’s health-related concerns like cycle irregularity or perimenopause symptoms.

“Ultimately, we see AI as almost filling some of the role that your doctor fulfills for you today,” Hale added.

Chandra, who recently spent five years as vice president of information technology at automaker Lucid Motors, will focus on developing the data architecture and governance that supports such initiatives. He will report to Chief Financial Officer Sean Brecker.

Chandra said that his previous experience overseeing IT at Lucid, including its role in design, manufacturing, supply chain and logistics, has prepared him for the new role.

“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,” he said.

Chiu has a slightly different challenge, ensuring that giving priority to those safety and security guardrails doesn’t slow the company’s pace of innovation. He will lead the development and training of agents, AI models and algorithms that provide insights and advice to customers through the Oura App experience.

Chiu was most recently chief technology officer of digital therapeutics developer Click Therapeutics, where he led the company’s AI transformation. He reports to Oura Chief Operating Officer Michael Chapp.

Part of Oura’s appeal over traditional smartwatches is its simplicity for users who don’t want another screen to look at. Customers go to a connected app on their phones to access insights like each day’s sleep, activity and “readiness,” which refers to whether your body is primed for intense exercise.

Now as consumers take an increasingly proactive approach to optimizing their health and wellness, Oura is well positioned to capitalize on the opportunity, Hale said. But it faces competition, too. The company, valued at $11 billion, has filed confidentially for an IPO. Screenless wearable competitor Whoop has a valuation of $10.1 billion.

Oura’s proprietary women’s health model, which was trained on a foundation of medical research and sources reviewed by Oura’s in-house team of board-certified clinicians and women’s health experts, provides one example of where the company is heading. Hale said the goal going forward is to create specialized models for more specific subpopulations.

He added, “Our vision is that we want domain expert models, not some cloud model trained on Reddit, making health decisions about you.”

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Follow Isabelle Bousquette on LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and TikTok for more behind the scenes on her tech and AI coverage, and lately, her contributions to the WSJ Leadership Institute’s new Executive Resilience series, where she’s profiling America’s top execs about their fitness and wellness habits.

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