Humane, the startup behind the AI Pin gadget, is already on the hunt for a potential buyer for its business. According to a Bloomberg report, the company, led by former Apple employees, is “seeking a price between 750 and 1,000 million dollars”.
After the debut of the AI Pin, priced at a whopping $699, it could be difficult to sell it: the device has been heavily criticized for its slow response time and a user experience that does not match the concept of a portable and always-on artificial intelligence assistant that its founders promised prior to the device’s launch.
The product was presented, at least in part, as a way for people to be more present and reduce their increasing dependence on smartphones.
AI Pin: A powerful idea, a terrible execution
Humane has developed its own operating system, CosmOS, which runs on the AI Pin. It connects to a network of AI models to get answers to voice queries and analyze what the integrated camera points at. For some interactions, the device emits a laser “screen” that is projected onto the user’s palm. A monthly subscription is required to keep the device active.
The Bloomberg report indicates that Humane has raised $230 million from investors including Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who is rumored to be developing an unrelated product (in collaboration with legendary Apple designer Jony Ive) that could better showcase the promises of AI.
Humane was valued at $850 million by investors in 2023, but that was before its first product was universally criticized by industry professionals. There are some innovative and clever ideas, but the AI software is not sufficiently developed and is too inconsistent, and the hardware has shown poor battery life and overheating issues.
Humane has committed to fixing some of these issues with firmware updates. Last week, they released the GPT-4o model from OpenAI to further enhance the device’s intelligence.
The list of potential buyers for Humane seems quite small considering the price that the startup expects to reach.
Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are making great strides in the field of AI, with large-scale language models and an increasingly prevalent generative AI, but it is not clear how much value Humane’s intellectual property would actually bring to any of their ongoing efforts.
