Humane today announced the availability of its first product, the Ai Pin. The Bay Area-based hardware startup has been kicking around since 2017, a ye

Humane’s $699 Ai Pin is now available

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2024-04-16 13:30:08

Humane today announced the availability of its first product, the Ai Pin. The Bay Area-based hardware startup has been kicking around since 2017, a year after co-founders Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri left Apple. Since then, the company has been well-funded, to the tune of $230 million, and focused on building stand-alone AI devices.

Ai Pin is the first of what Humane hopes will be a long line of devices aimed at harnessing the power and popularity of generative AI platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. The system relies on a number of different LLM-based systems, harnessing what it believes to be the best platform for each individual job.

TechCrunch spoke with Bongiorno and Chaudhri about the company’s history and plans for the future. We also picked up one of the devices for some hands-on testing. The Humane Ai Pin is still very much a first-generation product in a number of ways, including reliability and functionality, but the hardware represents a keen attention to detail that betrays its founders origins.

Humane’s vision for the $699 device is one in which a new technology can free itself of its predecessors’ limitations. Specifically this means a voice-based, always-connected device that can help users look up from their phone screens from time to time.