Humane, the startup behind the acclaimed AI Pin wearable computer, is already looking for potential buyers for its business. This is according to a report BloombergThe company, led by former longtime Apple employees Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, is “seeking a price between $750 million and $1 billion.”
After the debut of the $699 AI Pin, it might be a hard sell: The device was criticized for being slow to respond and a user experience that fell far short of the always-on, wearable AI assistant concept its founders promised at launch was widely criticized. The product is being promoted, at least in part, as a way to get people more active and less dependent on their growing smartphones.
Humane has developed its own operating system, called CosmOS, that runs on AI Pin. It connects to a network of artificial intelligence models to get answers to voice queries and analyze what the built-in cameras are pointing at. For certain interactions, the device emits a laser “display” that is projected onto the wearer’s inner palm. A monthly subscription is required to keep the device active.
In 2023, Humane was valued by investors at $850 million, but that was before its first product was universally panned by critics. There are some new and clever ideas, but the AI Pin’s software is immature and too inconsistent, and the hardware exhibits poor battery life and overheating issues. Humane promises to address some of these bugs through firmware updates. Just last week, it launched OpenAI’s GPT-4o model to further enhance the intelligence of its devices.
Humane’s list of potential buyers seems small, given the price the startup hopes to fetch. Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are all making big advances in artificial intelligence—large language models and generative AI are becoming increasingly common—but it’s unclear how much value Humane’s intellectual property rights will actually bring to them. effort.
