Oura pulls planned IPO at the last minute as AI wearables face a privacy reckoning

Oura had signaled strong demand going into an IPO. Then, hours before pricing on a recent Tuesday, the Finnish smart ring maker walked away from its planned Nasdaq debut — and the explanation it offered left analysts unconvinced.

I really believe that there's something else that's causing them to pull out of the IPO, and I don't think it's the market. I just can't nail what it is.— Anshel Sag, Principal Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy

Them jumping out of this IPO is kind of weird.— Anshel Sag, Principal Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy

Oura cited "uncertainty in the IPO market" for the postponement, according to CNBC. But some analysts were skeptical of that explanation. Reports also pointed to valuation and lockup terms as possible factors.

The abrupt exit lands at a fraught moment for the entire AI wearables category. Apple, Google, Meta and a wave of startups are racing to establish glasses, rings, charms and pendants as the next platform-defining device class. But alongside genuine consumer interest, the gadgets have accumulated a reputation problem — one rooted in real incidents and amplified by social media.

Bella Nowroozi, a 24-year-old master's student, described noticing a blinking light on her date's glasses at a mall two years ago — the telltale sign of Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses recording. She told him to delete the footage.

I was honestly pretty shocked. I hadn't really experienced anything like that before. I was also scared to go on dates after that as openly as I did before.— Bella Nowroozi, master's student

Nowroozi's experience is far from isolated. Meta's Ray-Ban glasses have been dubbed "pervert glasses" on social media, with users reporting a man photographing a woman on a date without consent and a buyer from Facebook Marketplace taking unauthorized videos of a woman and her children. Meta's own advertising campaign featuring Kylie Jenner filming her daily life drew further criticism. Meta did not respond to CNBC's request for comment.

The backlash has moved beyond social media. Smart glasses have been banned from gyms and other venues over privacy concerns. In February, a judge in the Meta social media addiction trial in Los Angeles threatened to hold anyone wearing AI smart glasses during CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony in contempt of court — even as several people escorting Zuckerberg into the building were wearing the Meta Ray-Ban glasses.

It's done for at this moment. We're going to have to revisit this 10 years from now.— Gil Luria, Analyst, DA Davidson

Luria said the growing resistance to camera-equipped glasses is a hard battle to overcome. He noted that when he gifted the spectacles to his twin teenage boys last year, they were "super excited" — but now, he says, they "wouldn't be caught dead in them." Meta last month unveiled a camera-free smart glasses option, a concession to the backlash.

The wearables market is not short of activity. Meta last week unveiled its Tamagotchi-like Muse Charm — a custom housing for its personal agent app that quickly topped Apple's iOS App Store free apps list. OpenAI this week rolled out its own personal assistant called Dots. Apple previewed AI features on the Watch Series 12 that will listen to users' conversations. But the flurry of launches has not resolved the category's core tension: whether the technology is useful enough to overcome the public's wariness.

Their value add has to overcome the perception of AI being a technology that people are opposed. It needs to be more helpful and useful than people's apprehensions about it.— Anshel Sag, Principal Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy

Some devices have already failed that test. The Humane AI Pin was discontinued last year following poor customer reviews. The Rabbit r1 personal assistant lacked distinct use cases from the smartphone and faced technical and hardware problems.

If you force someone to spend $700 on a device that overheats, has a user interface that doesn't work in sunlight, battery life that is poor, unless what it does is magical, that's not going to work.— Avi Greengart, Founder and Tech Analyst, Techsponential

Health wearables — sleep trackers, exercise monitors, accident detection — have shown the clearest consumer value, a market where Oura itself competes alongside Apple and Google. Apple's AirPods are being transformed into hearing aids through accessibility features, according to Greengart. But the more speculative AI-first devices, the pins and pendants, have struggled to find a reason to exist beyond the smartphone already in everyone's pocket.

The policy environment is adding pressure. Flock Safety's license plate scanners are being vandalized and cities have ended contracts with the company over community outcry. The debate over AI safety risks is intensifying in Washington, with the blowback taking on greater political weight ahead of the midterm elections in November. Sprawling data centers have become a visual symbol of AI opposition, and always-listening or always-recording wearables have become, for many critics, an extension of that perceived surveillance infrastructure.

For Oura, the immediate question is when — or whether — it returns to the public markets. The company's fundamentals remain strong on paper, but the IPO withdrawal, whatever its true cause, means the smart ring maker must now wait out a market that has grown harder to read. For the AI wearables category as a whole, the stalled Oura debut is one more signal that the breakout moment everyone is anticipating has not yet arrived.

Why it matters — Oura's last-minute IPO retreat — despite strong demand — signals that AI wearables have yet to resolve the privacy backlash and investor uncertainty that stand between the category and mainstream acceptance.

Sources differ on Reason for Oura IPO withdrawal: Uncertainty in the IPO market (cnbc.com (Oura's stated reason)) vs Valuation and lockup terms (ifre.com) vs An unspecified factor unrelated to market conditions (cnbc.com (analyst view))

Reported by cnbc.com, ifre.com