CES 2025: The Velia ring was something of a crowdfunding sensation, but has left backers furious with delays. But its founders claim it's set for an April 2025 release date and it looks seriously impressive.
It’s been a long road for the Velia smart ring — and I’d kind of given up on it becoming a reality.
First named Iris, I wrote about it back in 2023, but it had to change its name to VELIA, and relaunched from Kickstarter to Indiegogo. It’s had over 8,000 packers on its Indiegogo campaign alone — raising over $2m. But fast forward to 2025, and backers are only just receiving sizing kits.
The crowdfunding showed a sleek smart ring, that tracked a host of wellness and biometric stats including (unbelievably) blood pressure. But, as is so common with crowdfunding, multiple campaigns left disgruntled backers with no hardware years after parting with their cash. A quick look on the Indiegogo page shows scores of furious backers.
So I was surprised to see Velia at CES Unveiled — and the founders had working samples, and a promise of an April 2025 launch. Given the promises to date, everything should be taken with a pinch of salt.
But here’s the thing — Velia looks fantastic. The Velia ring is so slim, that it’s almost half the thickness of an Oura Ring 4.
The founders revealed it was a semiconductor company at heart, and that it had shrunk a PPG sensor to be the smallest on the market. From there, the company was able to slim its ring down to what would be a gamechanging size — and it’s 5mm wide, compared to over 7mm for the Oura Ring 4.
The company also uses two types of PPG detection, which it says boosts the accuracy of its sensors. The PPG sensor will track heart rate and SpO2 in the standard way of reflecting light from the LED to its photoreceptors, but also transmissively pass light through the finger too.
It should be noted that the ring is only set to ship in four sizes — US6/8/10/12. So plenty of backers won’t get a perfect fit for the ring they’ve paid for.
Luckily I’m a US120m and got a change to try the Velia out on the stand at CES Unveiled. The thinness is seriously impressive — but that of course is only half the story.
What we don’t know, yet, is if the thinner form factor can produce the necessary accuracy. And even if it can, how adept Velia is at analyzing the data and making it actionable.
We’ve seen impressive sensors before, but semiconductor companies often don’t have the necessary expertise to make the data meaningful. It’s all well and good to produce a page of biomarkers and data points, but if you can’t make it actionable, then people won’t stick with the platform.
But the hardware alone represents what smart rings should be.
The founders acknowledge the difficulties they’ve faced getting to market, but believe they are driving the smart ring segment forward. Whether what they’ve produced will be good enough to satisfy unhappy backers — and to convince new customers to jump into the platform is another matter.
