Ultrahuman Smart Ring Maker to Launch Biological Age Model Across UAE

Ultrahuman and Abu Dhabi will dedicate the next two years to research and clinical validation of the model.

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Ultrahuman, a Bangalore-based health tech startup best known for its smart rings, has partnered with Abu Dhabi health authorities to develop a biological age model that it says will eventually be available to people across the UAE.

On Monday, Ultrahuman announced that it had signed a two-year memorandum of understanding with the Abu Dhabi Public Health Center (ADPHC) to develop and validate the model, which combines clinical biomarkers with data from wearable devices. The goal of the collaboration is to use these signals to estimate how fast a person is aging and to identify factors such as sleep, activity, cardiovascular health and metabolism that may speed up or slow down the process.

The partnership represents Ultrahuman's latest effort to move beyond selling wearable hardware and deploy its health algorithms on a much larger scale. CEO Mohit Kumar said in an interview: "The startup increasingly sees itself as a health data company, and its smart ring is one way to collect data that can support algorithms for aging, longevity and other areas of health."

“If you look at Ultrahuman as a company, obviously we have the Ultrahuman ring, which is a way to get information from the human body,” Kumar told TechCrunch. "But what we really care about is not just the shape, the ring, but what do we do with this data?"

Working with a government gives Ultrahuman the opportunity to apply its algorithms to a much broader population than its customer base, Kumar said. The startup has sold around 800,000 smart rings worldwide. According to the company, the Abu Dhabi partnership is Ultrahuman's first step towards deploying a health algorithm on a national scale, with the Health Age model eventually available to people across the UAE.

Although Ultrahuman is known for its smart rings, Kumar said the Biological Age model is designed to be wearable, allowing data from rings, wristband devices, straps and patches to be logged alongside clinical biomarkers. The startup said that people will eventually be able to access their health age through government digital health platforms including TAMM and Sahatna.

Ultrahuman and ADPHC will spend the next two years researching and clinically validating the model. Kumar told TechCrunch that the wider rollout will happen in stages, but did not provide a timeline.

The UAE is currently among Ultrahuman's top 10 markets, accounting for about 4-5 percent of its total revenue, Kumar said. He pointed out: This startup has been operating in this market for nearly five years and compared to its other markets, it has about 25% more longevity.

Ultrahuman's existing customer base gives it a narrower demographic than a government health system, Kumar said, whose typical users are between the ages of 25 and 43, while deploying the model across the UAE gives it exposure to a wider range of age groups.

Kumar told TechCrunch that the underlying biological age model was developed using existing data from Ultrahuman, which combines users' chronological age with wearable signals and, for some users, blood test markers. This allows the startup to track how health markers change with age and identify deviations from those patterns.

Kumar emphasized that the model is not trained on UAE data. "We will deploy an algorithm on data from the United Arab Emirates," he said. He added that Ultrahuman will not have access to personally identifiable information through the app.

Ultrahuman isn't the only smart ring maker working with Abu Dhabi on preventative health. In May, the Ministry of Health - Abu Dhabi announced that it was partnering with Ultrahuman's main competitor, Oura, to combine the company's wearable data with the UAE's longitudinal health data, initially focusing on women's health and cardiometabolic risks.

Kumar told TechCrunch that Ultrahuman is not aware of another company working with Abu Dhabi authorities specifically on the Health Age model. While he acknowledged that the government is working with several health technology companies, he declined to comment on the scope of its work with Abu Dhabi.

The parallel partnerships come as Ultrahuman and Oura compete in the smart ring market, looking to push their businesses beyond wearable hardware and deeper into preventative health. The collaboration with Abu Dhabi authorities also comes as Ultrahuman looks to build a smart ring that can run software on the device and even power everything from AI interactions to gaming.

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Jagmeet covers startups, tech policy updates and other important tech-centric developments from India for TechCrunch. He was earlier working as a Chief Correspondent at NDTV.

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