Earlier this month, the 12-year-old Finnish company announced<\/a> that it closed on more than $900 million in a Fidelity<\/a>-led financing at an impressive $11 billion valuation. The raise comes in the wake of sharp growth, with Oura expecting<\/a> to reach $1 billion in sales this year.<\/p>\n Beyond Oura<\/p>\n But Oura isn\u2019t the only wearables-related company pulling in significant venture investment recently. Using Crunchbase data<\/a>, we put together a sample list of 18 companies funded in roughly the past year innovating in this area.<\/p>\n Funded startups have a broad array of chosen use cases as well. While medical and health monitoring remains the most prevalent application, we\u2019re also seeing the AI boom trickling into more consumer-focused offerings outside the health care realm.<\/p>\n Smart lenses, glasses and cow collars<\/p>\n In this arena, one of the largest and most recent rounds went to Xpanceo<\/a>, a startup developing smart contact lenses that incorporate a microdisplay and external sensors to provide wearers with useful information based on their focus. The 4-year-old, Dubai-based company raised<\/a> $250 million this summer at a $1.35 billion valuation.<\/p>\n Nothing<\/a>, a maker of Android smartphones, earbuds and watches, is another wearables developer, albeit not a pure-play in the space, with a big round of late. The startup closed on a $200 million Series C<\/a> last month to further its vision of an \u201cAI-native platform in which hardware and software converge into a single intelligent system.\u201d The company cited smart glasses as one of the devices in which it envisions incorporating its operating system.<\/p>\n And while wearables is usually understood to be a category for humans, we did mix it up a bit in our list by including Halter<\/a>, a maker of a platform that combines smart collars and virtual fencing for ranchers to manage their cattle. It closed on<\/a> $100 million in Series D funding this summer at a $1 billion valuation.<\/p>\n Health and medical conditions<\/p>\n Wearables for monitoring medical conditions are also still drawing investors\u2019 attention with two established names each picking up $100 million financings this year.<\/p>\n San Diego-based Biolinq<\/a>, which has developed a wearable biosensor that measures glucose levels continuously just beneath the skin\u2019s surface, secured its $100 million round in March. A month earlier, VitalConnect<\/a>, a San Jose, California-based maker of wearable, connected patches for remote monitoring of cardiac health, secured a round of the same size, led by Ally Bridge Group<\/a>.<\/p>\n We\u2019re also still seeing some varied startup activity around health-monitoring wearables. An offbeat one that caught our eye was Epicore Biosystems<\/a>, which develops a wearable that tracks biomarkers in sweat to measure hydration, nutrition, stress and other physiological data.<\/p>\n Deep-pocketed competition<\/p>\n Being in an offbeat niche might provide considerable advantages to a startup. That\u2019s because wearables startups play in a space that also happens to draw the largest technology companies in the world.<\/p>\n From Apple<\/a> watches to Google<\/a> Fitbit<\/a> devices to Meta<\/a>\u2019s AI glasses<\/a>, giants with valuations in the trillions are finding appeal in the space. One of Apple\u2019s newest offerings \u2014 AirPods with live translation<\/a> \u2014 shows the technological sophistication of wearables is only on the rise.<\/p>\n Even so, we\u2019re betting startups will continue to find ways to innovate in ways that differentiate them from the tech giants. In particular, they have the advantage of marketing to a small initial early-adopter crowd and tweaking a product until it\u2019s ripe for a much wider audience.<\/p>\n Related Crunchbase query:<\/p>\n
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