Health wearables are booming, with both Oura and Whoop eyeing IPOs, but investors remain cautious after Fitbit's struggles and low consumer hardware margins

The health wearables market is surging. Oura and Whoop are both eyeing IPOs at what sources describe as heady valuations. Sleep scores, heart rate tracking, and full biological dashboards have gone mainstream.

But Wall Street isn't popping champagne yet. Investors remain cautious, haunted by Fitbit's struggles and the notoriously thin margins of consumer hardware. Selling gadgets people strap to their bodies is one thing. Making money doing it is another.

The core tension is clear: demand for health tracking devices keeps climbing, but the business model still makes VCs nervous. Hardware margins are brutal, and Fitbit's trajectory — once a market darling, eventually swallowed by Google — serves as a cautionary tale.

Whether Oura and Whoop can convince public market investors they've cracked the code remains the billion-dollar question.