Tech
Smart ring maker Oura files to go public
SpaceX may have stolen the show with its IPO prospectus, but Elon Musk’s aerospace-AI-data center company wasn’t the only notable business to file to go public this week. On Thursday, Finnish smart ring company Oura said that it had confidentially submitted a Form S-1 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in preparation for an IPO.
Founded in 2015, Oura has emerged as one of the most popular wearable health trackers, setting itself apart from Fitbit, Garmin, and Apple’s watch products with a sleek, unobtrusive ring.
The Oura ring tracks activity, sleep, and daily “readiness,” among other health metrics, and today has customers around the world. At the time of its Series E last September, Oura said it had sold 5.5 million rings to date, a steep jump from the 2.5 million figure it had reported the prior year.
That Series E saw Oura raising $875 million at a valuation of $11 billion, more than double the $5 billion price tag it had earned in a prior round in 2024.
The company recently introduced a proprietary AI model geared toward women’s health in an effort to cater to its growing base of women customers.
Tech
Meta quietly launches a new Reddit-like app called Forum
Meta has quietly released a new stand-alone app for Facebook Groups called “Forum.” The company seems to be positioning Forum as a platform that functions similarly to Reddit, describing the app as a “dedicated space built for deeper discussions, real answers and communities you care about.”
The app appears to have first been spotted by social media consultant Matt Navarra.
After you sign in with your Facebook account, Forum will load in your groups, profile, and activity, and let you make posts with a nickname, just like on the standard Facebook app. Meta noted that your groups still exist on Facebook, and anything you share on Forum will be visible in your groups on Facebook.
Meta says Forum’s feeds are centered on conversations within groups, allowing users to see “what real people are saying, not just what’s trending,” and making it easy to pick up where they left off.
The app includes an AI-powered “Ask” tab that lets users ask questions and receive answers compiled from discussions across different groups. There’s also an admin AI assistant to help administrators manage groups and moderate content.
This isn’t the first time Meta has launched a stand-alone app for groups. Back in 2014, the company rolled out a dedicated Groups app that aimed to make it easier for users to share content across groups, but that effort was shuttered in 2017.
Forum is one of two new apps from Meta in recent weeks. Last month, the social media company rolled out a new app called Instants that lets users share disappearing photos with Instagram friends.
Instants and Forum come amid a broader effort at Meta to release more apps. The Wall Street Journal reported a few weeks ago that CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that with AI-driven efficiencies allowing the company to build more apps, the social media giant now aims to roll out many more apps than it has historically.
Referring to Meta’s chief product office Chris Cox, Zuckerberg reportedly said, “So Chris and I have been talking about ‘all right, well can we build 50 new apps?’ Like, yeah probably. But we probably should start by doing a few before we just, like, ramp up trying to do 50 all at once.”
Meta might think consumers want more apps, but that’s likely not the case, especially when its new apps mostly end up being copies of other popular services. Instants, for example, borrows ideas from BeReal and Snapchat, while Meta Edits, launched last year, is largely a copy of ByteDance’s CapCut.
Meta did not immediately return a request for comment.
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Tech
SpaceX files to go public, and the math requires a little faith
The SpaceX S-1 is finally here, and the story it tells goes way further than rockets. The filing runs to 36 pages of risk factors alone, and the numbers inside match the ambition: a $28 trillion total addressable market, a pay package tied to establishing a Mars colony, and a valuation target that would make it the largest IPO in American history.
Watch as Equity podcast hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into what the filing actually says, what it leaves out, and whether any of this math connects to reality. The team also covers NanoCo turning down a $20M buyout to raise a $12M seed for its secure Nano Claw alternative, Anthropic’s $300M acquisition of SDK startup Stainless, and the Google I/O announcement that promises to change search as we know it.
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
Tech
Trump Mobile confirms it exposed customers’ personal data, including phone numbers and home addresses
Phone provider Trump Mobile has confirmed that it was exposing customers’ names, email addresses, mailing addresses, cell numbers, and order identifiers to the open internet.
Chris Walker, a spokesperson for the Trump-branded phone maker, told TechCrunch that the company is investigating the exposure and has not found evidence that content or financial information spilled online. The company said there was no breach of Trump Mobile’s network, systems, or infrastructure.
Walker said that the exposure was linked to a third-party platform provider that supports “certain Trump Mobile operations.” He did not name the provider.
The company’s admission came after reports earlier this week that Trump Mobile customers’ data was publicly accessible from the web.
On Wednesday, two YouTubers who ordered Trump Mobile’s phone said a researcher alerted them that their personal information was exposed online. The YouTubers Coffeezilla and penguinz0 said they tried to alert Trump Mobile of the exposure after the researcher also tried but to no avail.
Walker said Trump Mobile is evaluating whether it needs to notify customers of the exposure of their personal data.
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