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I just spoke one-on-one with Mohit Kumar, the founder and CEO of Ultrahuman, one of the best-known smart rings brands not named Oura.
Our conversation touched on everything from mitigating the wrath of other brands' legal departments, whether or not the Ultrahuman Ring Air will return to the U.S. market, how Ultrahuman plans to stay largely subscription-free, the promise of new, ground-breaking biomarker tracking tools, the massive benefits of on-chip processing, and the future of Ultrahuman ten years out.
We also discussed the new flagship Ultrahuman Ring Pro — now officially available for preorder in the U.S. — which promises 15 days of battery, a unique and durable unibody design, and improved heart tracking tech.
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The Ultrahuman Ring Pro is coming to the U.S.; are you anticipating any legal action from your competitors? And are you confident that the design changes from the Ultrahuman Ring Air to the Pro are substantial enough to keep the device on store shelves in the U.S.?
Mohit Kumar: We are pretty confident, and that's why we went through the [U.S.] customs procedure 177 to get the device approved. We took the right path to make sure that the design is approved by customs, and they officially issue an order that says 'this is a design which is unique and non-infringing, for the patent which Oura holds.' That's why we are pretty confident, I think even more than that, we're confident in our ability to build and create like engineers in this space.
So, behind the scenes, from an engineering standpoint, you figured out workarounds to avoid the wrath of Oura's legal department?
Kumar: Yeah, I think even more now, we believe that Ring Air is unique [from the Oura Ring design] and different. There was a negative order from the International Trade Commission (ITC), but we're still fighting that in the Federal Circuit. But the Ring Pro obviously takes it to another level.
The [Ring Pro's] unibody design is pretty unique in this category; it's never been done, and it's basically a completely different kind of engineering.
Is there a chance we'll eventually see the Ultrahuman Ring Air return to the U.S.?
Kumar: I can't predict this, but our intent is to fight on the right grounds to make sure that the Ring air and every model that we have is allowed to be sold everywhere.
What are the biggest differences between the Ultrahuman Ring Air and the Ultrahuman Ring Pro?
Kumar: The Ring Air is more comfort-first. [The Ring Pro] is more about robustness and battery life; we intend to continue both versions.
What was your primary aim when developing the Ultrahuman Ring Pro, besides avoiding Oura's patents?
Kumar: The biggest focus from an engineering perspective was to get a fifteen-day battery life. We prioritized this above everything else.
The Ring Pro is also capable of handling on-chip machine learning tasks. Explain why that's a big deal.
Instead of just a tracking device, [smart rings] should become a computer on the body in the future. It should have its own brain, it should have its own ability to at least micro-think. And I think that's the direction that we're heading
— Mohit Kumar, Ultrahuman
Kumar: If you remember, we were the first company in the world in the ring space to introduce AFib detection. [This feature previously] required us to extract the AFib signals, or the PPG signals from the ring, send the signals to the phone, the phone syncs the signals to the cloud, and then we have an Afib validation service which runs the machine learning model on the cloud and then sends the feedback back to the phone and then back to the device itself, the ring.
Now, naturally, you would question the robustness of this entire integration, which depends a lot on how much data you're able to transfer. Then the data transfer becomes a critical step of this AFib detection.
Now, what if you don't need to transfer so much data? What if you could actually compute on the chip itself? This changes the game because if you don't need to transfer so much data, you save battery. At the same time, you're able to look into so much more raw signal.
If you were to send so much raw signal, you would dissipate a lot of battery, it would take a lot of time, and require a stable connection. Whereas if you do all the processing on the device, you could process all that you want.
That was a core motivation behind adding more computing power to the device. Instead of just a tracking device, [smart rings] should become a computer on the body in the future. It should have its own brain, it should have its own ability to at least micro-think.
And I think that's the direction that we're heading into, and that's why it's such a big deal. There could also be like tons of new signals that you could derive, potentially blood pressure or signs of women's health issues like PCOS, etc.
You offer a largely subscription-free model where core features don't cost anything, but more advanced add-ons do. How do you ensure that Ultrahuman remains subscription-free, and how do you determine which tools go behind the paywall?
Kumar: Those are two different questions, I think. The first one is how do we make money in the future? Close to to 20% of our users do subscribe to a paid capability.
The number has been growing over time, but that really obviously helps us make money, but at the same time, they're looking for something deeper, and that's the core philosophy of the platform: that the base features like sleep, activity, movement, there's no reason why anyone should be charging you for that data.
Where do you see Ultrahuman as a company ten years from now?
Kumar: There are two ways, two journeys for this company. One is selling the most rings. It's a great business, we are the market leaders, but it's still not too exciting. Like, it's not the best outcome for the company.
I think where we want to be, apart from just selling more devices, is where we are able to discover a whole new biomarker for help. If you visit us and our engineers and meet them, they're obsessed with finding new markers.
What you will see in the next few months is a potentially completely new marker of heart health, which has never been tapped from the human body. But not in the ring form factor, just to be clear, it could be a new form factor.
Does this mean that Ultrahuman is moving away from smart rings?
Kumar: We are a health data company, we don't care about the form factor, and, well, it might seem that we're competing in the ring form factor and pretty fiercely. However, all that we care about is basically how do we help people generate more data so that we can actually deliver on helping improve their health.
So it doesn't need to be a ring, always. But if the ring is the best form factor, obviously, we'll build the ring. In the spectrum of companies you could relate us to, we are more like Garmin, with multiple devices, multiple form factors, and unconstrained by hardware or software engineering.
In 2026, what are the factors you feel most set the Ultrahuman platform apart from the competition?
Kumar: Transparency and control: you own your own data, and you only pay for what you want to pay for. This is the theme that we have been building for the last few years because we believe that this is a super early space. [Smart rings are] like computers in the 1980s right now.
On the subject, if a major tech player like Apple were to jump into the smart ring space, would you see this as a good or bad thing for Ultrahuman?
Kumar: I think a net positive, if you look at the 10-year spectrum, because how many ring devices get sold every year? Five or six million at max, all players included. How many watches get sold every year? ~300 million.
So if a large player makes an entry, you would imagine that the space would reach 100 million devices annually pretty soon. Obviously, that'll help make us happy financially, but from an impact perspective as well.
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