# Ultrahuman Eyes Gesture Control for Future Rings With Qualcomm Boost > Source: > Published: 2026-09-03 20:38:41+00:00 Smart ring company [Ultrahuman is up there](https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/ultrahuman-ring-pro-on-sale-now-in-us-return/) with Samsung as the biggest rivals to [Oura](https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/oura-ring-5-review-best-smart-ring/), but it has some lofty ambitions for its next steps, which it hinted at on Thursday at [IFA here in Berlin](https://www.cnet.com/tech/the-weirdest-and-wackiest-tech-we-found-at-ifa-2026/). The company announced it had raised $70 million from Qualcomm Ventures, Labcorp, Alpha Wave, Blume and others to develop next-generation AI wearables. The smart ring market is currently dominated by Oura, but Ultrahuman is finding ways to set itself apart. It has already evolved rapidly over the past few years into a health company offering a range of complementary products and services, including blood testing and an ambient sleep monitor that sits by your bed. Earlier this year, it launched the [Ring Pro,](https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/ultrahuman-ring-pro-better-bettery-more-data/) which has better battery life than its predecessors and also doesn’t require a subscription, unlike some of its rivals. The new funding is set to further boost this growth, putting the Ultrahuman Ring at the center of an ecosystem where data about your body is used for more insightful and actionable purposes. Ultrahuman plans to invest the money in sensing, materials, electrical engineering, algorithms, physiology and clinical science to build future rings and ultimately make the human body more understandable with AI. The partnership with Qualcomm draws Ultrahuman into a much wider ecosystem of AI products, many of which are also wearable, with which the Ultrahuman Ring could become interoperable. One example is the [Meta Glasses](https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/metas-revamped-ray-ban-gen-2-glasses-are-worth-it-just-for-the-battery-boost/), which the Ultrahuman Ring could be linked to for purposes of gesture control, said Bhuvan Srinivasan, the company’s chief business officer, in an interview. “What we’re really thinking is you could have a ring that helps you control what’s happening in the glasses, but then at the same time at night it measures all your sleep and all your health,” he said. “So it’s valuable to you both in the day and the night.” This won’t be possible with the Ring Pro, he added. “There’ll be another Ring level that we are working on with them.” The partnership with diagnostic and drugs company Labcorp is also important to bringing Ultrahuman’s vision to life, due to the support it can provide to Ultrahuman’s Blood Vision preventative blood-testing service that it’s been building out for the past two years, Srinivasan said. “The idea behind Blood Vision is really to bring together all the things you cannot measure on a wearable, but you can measure in your blood, which is also very valuable,” he said. “And now we really want to roll that out and make preventive health blood testing much more mainstream. And that’s really why we tied up with them over time.” The funding could help Ultrahuman position itself as a bridge between people’s health, AI agents and other AI-equipped devices. “Ultrahuman is pioneering a new generation of personal AI devices that make personalized insights effortless,” said Quinn Li, senior vice president of Qualcomm Technologies and global head of Qualcomm Ventures. “We look forward to supporting their journey as they expand the possibilities of personal AI devices.” *Editors’ note:** Katie Collins’ travel costs for the IFA conference were covered in part by Xiaomi. **The judgments and opinions of CNET are our own**.*