Oura CEO Tom Hale is attempting to set the file straight concerning the good ring maker’s partnership with the Division of Protection (DoD) and knowledge miner Palantir, which is utilized by protection, intelligence, and regulation enforcement businesses in the USA and elsewhere. On the Fortune Brainstorm Tech convention on Monday, Hale’s interview began off with a bang together with his outright denial that the corporate was sharing person knowledge with the federal government.

“There was lots of misinformation about this,” he stated, referring to the quite a few influencer-driven studies that led to a viral backlash towards the well being tracker. Oura’s rings accumulate details about customers’ coronary heart charges, sleep, physique temperature, motion, menstrual cycles, and extra.

Hale had already gone on-line to deal with the deceptive studies and subsequent PR backlash, assuring customers in his first-ever TikTok video that the corporate didn’t promote their knowledge to 3rd events “with out your express consent.”

As an alternative, he defined that the DoD program Oura is concerned in requires the corporate to run its enterprise answer in a separate, safe atmosphere, and that the federal government doesn’t have entry to customers’ Oura well being knowledge.

Hale reiterated these factors on Monday, saying, “For the file, we are going to by no means share your knowledge with anybody except you direct us to do it. We’ll by no means promote your knowledge to anybody ever.” He stated the studies spreading on-line that Oura partnered with the U.S. authorities to share person knowledge had been “merely not true,” and he’s grateful the outrage had begun to relax.

As well as, he tried to clear up confusion over the corporate’s relationship with Palantir, saying that calling it a “partnership” was “a little bit of a powerful promote.”

As an alternative, Hale defined that Oura had acquired an organization final 12 months that had a SaaS (software-as-a-service) relationship with Palantir — that means a enterprise contract quite than a data-sharing settlement. That relationship was for one thing known as Impression Degree 5, or IL5, which is a DoD certification normal for dealing with delicate, unclassified knowledge.

“It’s a element of their answer. That contract remains to be working, and that information — that relationship — grew to become blown right into a ‘large partnership’ with Palantir . . . We’ve got a small business relationship. The techniques should not related. There’s no means Palantir has entry to your knowledge. Nobody within the authorities can see your knowledge. Nobody at Palantir can see your knowledge. Completely overblown,” he stated.

Hale added that the privateness and safety of person knowledge are vital to the corporate and its clients. He additionally identified that Oura’s phrases of service state that it’ll oppose any efforts designed to make use of person knowledge for surveillance or prosecution functions. He even famous that when customers authorize Oura to look at their knowledge (as an illustration, for tech assist functions), the one that evaluations it has a restricted function within the firm and might solely see particularly what was approved.

“We don’t have a look at folks’s knowledge…you possibly can’t try this,” he stated.

The CEO additionally briefly addressed Oura’s future, observing that the market was shifting — significantly in Asia and India — to smaller, cheaper wrist-borne wearables. Ring wearables, in the meantime, doubled in dimension.

“We’re rising north of 100%,” Hale famous.

The corporate sees its potential as changing into a “preventionist” well being machine, one which alerts customers to points earlier than they change into issues that make them sick. That is aided by the truth that Oura rings are designed to offer customers insights about how their well being metrics are evolving. The corporate additionally leverages machine intelligence and presents a devoted well being advisor.

Oura does see itself working extra with the federal government, simply not in the way in which that influencers described. Hale stated the corporate partnered with Medicare Benefit to offer rings to eligible sufferers, for instance.

Hale additionally hinted at the potential of different wearables.

“It’d be actually cool if there was one ring to rule all of them, however we all know virtually that’s not true,” he stated. [W]hether it’s metabolic [monitoring], perhaps it’s blood strain, perhaps it’s exercise, perhaps it’s different issues — perhaps it’s other forms of metrics which might be going to be introduced collectively. So I imagine very a lot that we’ll see a cloud of wearables. And the selection of these wearables shall be related to the medical use you’re attempting to place it to.”