A Tiny Ring on Your Finger Just Raised $70 Million to Become a Computer

Ultrahuman, a company based in Bengaluru, India, that makes smart rings, has raised $70 million in a funding round led by Qualcomm Ventures. The deal values Ultrahuman at $365 million, roughly triple what it was worth in 2023 (TechCrunch).

The round included $65 million in equity (ownership stakes) and $5 million in debt. Participants included Qualcomm Ventures, Labcorp, Alpha Wave, Blume Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, and Alteria Capital. Qualcomm Ventures is leading with an investment of Rs 143 crore, with Alpha Wave contributing Rs 114 crore and Labcorp Rs 95 crore, according to Entrackr. Quinn Li, global head of Qualcomm Ventures, is backing a company whose annual revenue has climbed to $140 million, up about 45% from a year ago. Ultrahuman expects that figure to reach $200 million by January 2027.

The most important part of this deal is a chip partnership. Ultrahuman is working with Qualcomm on a new ring that will use Qualcomm's chips instead of the Nordic Semiconductor chips in its current devices. This matters because it signals Ultrahuman wants to make the ring do more computing on its own, instead of just collecting health data and sending it to your phone.

Founder and CEO Mohit Kumar, who co-founded Ultrahuman with Vatsal Singhal in 2019, is pushing that change in software too. Ultrahuman plans to release a software update by the end of September that adds game-controller functionality, the ability to interact with AI applications, and a way for outside developers to build new features for the ring. Think of it like how the App Store turned the iPhone from a phone with a browser into a device that can do almost anything — Ultrahuman wants the same kind of thing to happen with its ring.

Ultrahuman already makes money beyond selling the ring itself. About 12% of its users pay for PowerPlugs, a subscription that unlocks extra software features. The company has sold about 800,000 rings to date, up from roughly 700,000 in February. That subscription uptake is modest but meaningful. It creates a stream of recurring revenue that grows as more rings are sold, and the push to let outside developers build features could expand it further.

The company has not been growing profitably across the board, though. Ultrahuman swung to a Rs 176 crore loss in its most recent fiscal year from a Rs 73 crore profit the year before, according to provisional figures reported by the Times of India. The losses line up with aggressive spending: the company added roughly 100,000 ring sales in seven months while building a new chip platform and a software ecosystem at the same time.

Ultrahuman started in 2019 making continuous glucose monitors — devices that track blood sugar levels for metabolic health — before shifting to smart rings. That origin in health-sensor data is worth noting because it means the company's strength is reading and interpreting body signals, not building consumer electronics or software platforms. The Qualcomm partnership and the developer push take the company into areas where it has less experience.

The broader context here is that smart rings have been a small corner of the wearable device market, which is dominated by wrist-based gadgets like smartwatches. Watches have bigger batteries, more room for sensors, and screens you can look at. A ring that can act as a game controller, talk to AI apps, and run third-party software is making a different case: that a ring's closeness to the body, its always-on comfort, and its low distraction (no screen to check, no notifications pinging you) could make it a good way to interact with technology, not just a passive sensor.

Whether that case holds up depends on how well Ultrahuman executes. Building a community of outside developers is difficult. A ring offers limited ways to give it input — gestures, pressure, maybe interaction through a paired phone — and nobody has yet shown at a large scale what people will actually want to do with that. If the new Qualcomm chips give the ring more processing power and better battery life within the tight space and heat limits of a finger-worn device, the picture could change. But the deadlines are close: the software update is due by the end of September, and the $200 million revenue target is set for January 2027.

For Qualcomm Ventures, the investment puts the chipmaker into a type of wearable that sits outside its usual focus on smartphones and connected devices. The logic is simple: if smart rings become real computing platforms, Qualcomm wants its chips inside them from the start rather than trying to catch up later. The $365 million valuation gives Ultrahuman the money to pursue that transition without needing to turn a profit right away — a cushion the company appears to be using.