Oura’s public IPO filing gives investors more than a look at the smart-ring maker’s growth. It also offers a rare glimpse into how much money can move between a private company and its early shareholders before the company ever reaches the public market.
The numbers are striking. Oura reported $1.21 billion in revenue for the nine months ended June 30, up from $697.6 million a year earlier. At the same time, it spent $1.09 billion buying back shares from early investors.
That combination makes the filing worth watching. Oura is growing quickly, but the S-1 also shows how companies can create liquidity for existing shareholders ahead of an IPO and how those transactions can affect the financial picture presented to new investors.
Oura is growing fast, but the buyback is the headline
Oura sold 3.1 million rings during the nine-month period, already more than it sold during the entirety of the previous year. Its paying membership base doubled to 5 million, according to PitchBook’s analysis of the filing.
The subscription business is particularly notable.
Membership revenue reached $240.5 million, up 121%, while gross margin on membership revenue was 89%.
That matters because Oura is not simply selling hardware. The recurring membership business gives the company a second source of revenue tied to its installed base of users.
At the same time, Oura spent $1.09 billion repurchasing 27.9 million shares from holders who invested between the Seed round and Series C-1. That represented roughly 17% of its outstanding preferred stock.
One of the sellers was Forerunner Ventures, which sold 1.6 million Series B shares for $65 million and continues to own more than 5%.
For early investors, the transaction created liquidity before the IPO. For the company, it meant using its own balance sheet to fund those purchases.
That distinction is important.
Why Oura’s reported loss needs some context
Oura reported a $924.3 million net loss attributable to stockholders for the period.
On the surface, that number looks dramatic against $1.21 billion of revenue. But the accounting behind the loss tells a more complicated story.
The filing includes a deemed dividend to certain preferred shareholders. When a company repurchases preferred shares for more than their carrying value, the difference can be recorded as a deemed dividend.
In Oura’s case, that accounting treatment reduced income attributable to common shareholders without representing an operating expense in the same way as the costs of running the business.
PitchBook calculated $60.8 million of net income before the deemed dividend and other charges.
For investors reading an IPO filing, this is a good reminder that the headline net income number is not always enough to understand what is happening operationally.
The S-1 also disclosed $84.4 million in warranty expense in fiscal 2025 related to battery defects in some Ring 4 devices.
So there are two different stories sitting inside the filing: strong growth in the core business and significant financial activity around the company’s capital structure.
The IPO valuation question is still open
Oura last raised money at a reported $11 billion valuation in October.
By May, Bloomberg had reported that the company was considering an offering of as much as $3 billion at a valuation above $16 billion.
The public S-1 does not yet provide a price range.
That means the market still does not have the number that will ultimately tell investors how Oura’s underwriters value the business for the IPO.
The eventual price range will be one of the most important pieces of information to watch.
It will show how the public-market offering compares with the company’s previous private valuation and the higher valuation that had been reported earlier this year.
Jane Street is becoming a bigger player in AI infrastructure
Oura is only part of the private-market story this week.
Jane Street is also making moves deeper into AI infrastructure, combining investment activity with a major commitment to computing capacity.
Crusoe reportedly closed a more than $3 billion financing at a valuation of roughly $30 billion.
Separately, Bloomberg reported that Crusoe signed a five-year cloud contract with Jane Street worth around $13 billion.
The agreement reportedly covers GPU clusters and infrastructure for AI training and inference.
That is significant because Jane Street is not simply providing capital. It is also becoming a major customer.
The distinction matters for investors looking at companies building expensive AI infrastructure. A large customer contract backed by operating revenue can provide a different kind of support for a data-center business than venture funding alone.
Jane Street also reportedly led a $1.5 billion funding round for Fluidstack, at a valuation above $18 billion.
Fluidstack had announced a $750 million financing at a $7.5 billion valuation in July and previously disclosed a multiyear capacity agreement with Anthropic that was reported at $50 billion.
The two businesses should not be treated as direct valuation comparisons. Their scale, customers and contracted capacity are different.
Still, the activity shows how quickly capital is moving toward companies positioned to provide the infrastructure needed for AI.
Thinking Machines faces a different valuation story
Thinking Machines Lab is reportedly discussing a new funding round of at least $1 billion at a pre-money valuation of $40 billion or more.
If completed at that level, it would represent a huge increase from the company’s previous financing.
The company raised $2 billion at a $10 billion pre-money valuation in July 2025.
But there is another number worth noting.
Last fall, Thinking Machines was reportedly discussing a valuation of $50 billion or more. That round did not close.
A potential $40 billion valuation would therefore be much higher than the company’s last completed financing, while still below the level reportedly discussed last year.
The current figure remains preliminary. No term sheet has been reported.
That makes this less about a confirmed valuation and more about where investors are currently willing to price one of the most closely watched AI startups.
Anthropic’s IPO filing remains one of the biggest things to watch
Oura has filed publicly. Anthropic had not done so as of Thursday evening, despite reports that its prospectus was expected after Labor Day.
When Anthropic eventually files, investors will get a much clearer look at its financials, shareholder structure and costs.
The filing could also provide more information around the company’s dispute with the Pentagon and related regulatory issues.
For private-market investors, that disclosure will be particularly important because Anthropic has attracted enormous amounts of capital and sits at the center of the current AI infrastructure spending cycle.
The public filing will give the market another opportunity to compare the company’s reported financial performance with the enormous compute commitments associated with its growth.
Private-market valuations are getting harder to read in isolation
The broader funding activity reinforces a bigger point.
Private-market valuations are moving quickly, but they do not all tell the same story.
Cognition is reportedly looking to raise about $1 billion at a $47 billion valuation, after raising $1 billion at $26 billion in May.
Wonderful raised $550 million at a $5 billion valuation, more than doubling its reported March valuation of about $2 billion.
Upwind raised $300 million at a $3.8 billion valuation, compared with roughly $1.5 billion in January.
Lyte raised $165 million at a $1.6 billion post-money valuation, bringing its total funding since leaving stealth to $272 million.
Félix raised a $200 million financing, split between $87 million of equity and $113 million of debt.
Ultrahuman raised $70 million at a $365 million valuation, including $5 million of debt.
Taken together, these deals show continued appetite for AI, robotics, cybersecurity and consumer technology.
But they also show why investors need to look beyond the headline valuation.
The terms matter.
The amount of equity matters.
Debt matters.
Revenue growth matters.
And in some cases, the difference between a reported valuation and a completed financing can be substantial.
A crowded cap table can create its own complications
Another interesting development involves Town, where Index Ventures reportedly dropped out of a financing after a conflict was raised involving Instinct, a competing assistant backed by Index.
The episode highlights a growing challenge in venture capital.
As investors back more companies in the same sectors, conflicts can become harder to avoid. A firm may have an existing position in a direct competitor while being asked to participate in a new financing.
For founders, that can influence who sits around the table.
For investors, it raises questions about information rights, competitive exposure and how overlapping portfolio positions are managed.
Chinese AI companies are also heading toward the public markets
Moonshot AI, the company behind Kimi, reportedly filed confidentially for a Hong Kong IPO.
The company is reportedly targeting a $3 billion raise and is being valued at around $50 billion in an ongoing funding round.
It joins a growing group of Chinese AI companies moving toward public-market financing.
These valuations are difficult to compare directly with US private-market marks because the companies operate under different conditions, including differences in chip access, disclosure requirements and ownership rules.
Still, the direction is clear: AI companies are looking for increasingly large pools of capital across both private and public markets.
One number that stands out: 95+
According to PitchBook data cited by The New York Times, more than 95 investors hold stakes in both Anthropic and OpenAI.
That overlap matters.
The two AI labs have been valued at reported levels of $965 billion and $852 billion, respectively.
A liquidity event at either company could therefore have implications across many of the same venture and institutional investors.
It is another example of how concentrated the private AI market has become.
A relatively small group of investors has exposure to many of the companies driving the current funding cycle.
The market is watching liquidity, not just fundraising
The most interesting part of this week’s activity may not be the size of the funding rounds.
It is the growing importance of liquidity.
Oura’s $1.09 billion buyback shows how much capital can move to early shareholders before an IPO.
PayPal’s reported pause in the sale of its venture portfolio offers another example. The company had reportedly sought $900 million to $1 billion for a portfolio of more than 80 companies, but buyers and sellers have not yet agreed on terms.
These transactions offer clues about what private assets are actually worth in a market where pricing can be difficult to establish.
A financing round tells us what investors were willing to pay under a particular set of terms.
A secondary transaction tells us something different.
It shows what existing shareholders and buyers are willing to accept for liquidity.
That distinction is becoming increasingly important as private companies stay private longer and valuations continue to move rapidly.
What to watch next
There are several developments that could shape the private-market picture over the coming weeks.
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Oura’s IPO price range: The next amended filing should provide a clearer indication of how public-market investors are valuing the company.
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Anthropic’s S-1: The eventual prospectus should provide a much deeper look at revenue, costs, ownership and its regulatory situation.
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The jobs report and Fed expectations: Interest-rate expectations remain an important factor for late-stage valuations and the broader IPO market.
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PayPal’s venture portfolio: Whether the sale restarts, changes in size or comes at a lower price could provide another data point for the secondary market.
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AI infrastructure financing: Crusoe, Fluidstack and similar companies will remain important to watch as demand for GPUs and data-center capacity continues to grow.
The bigger picture is that private markets are becoming more transparent, but they are not necessarily becoming simpler.
Oura’s S-1 is a good example. The company is showing strong revenue growth, a rapidly expanding membership base and substantial pre-IPO shareholder liquidity, all within the same filing.
For investors, the lesson is straightforward: don’t stop at the valuation headline. Look at the cash flows, the capital structure, the terms of the financing and who is actually getting liquidity.
That is where the more interesting story often sits.