HP said it planned to acquire Humane’s ‘AI capabilities’, including its software platform, intellectual property, patents and some employees. The Ai Pin (pic) will be shut down, Humane said in a message to customers. — ©2025 The New York Times Company
SAN FRANCISCO: Humane, the ambitious startup behind the Ai Pin device that aimed to one day replace smartphones, agreed to sell parts of its business to HP for US$116mil (RM515.54mil), the companies said on Feb 18.
HP said it planned to acquire Humane’s “AI capabilities”, including its software platform, intellectual property, patents and some employees. The Ai Pin will be shut down, Humane said in a message to customers.
The deal caps a downfall for the high-flying startup, which heavily promoted the US$699 (RM3,106) pin with ads, a TED Talk and at Paris Fashion Week with supermodels. Humane raised US$240mil (RM1.06bil) in funding from high-profile investors, including Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, and his counterpart at OpenAI, Sam Altman, valuing the company at US$850mil (RM3.77bil) before it released a product.
Humane was created by Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, husband-and-wife founders who previously worked at Apple. The pair envisioned a wearable device that people would clip to their clothes and interact with using voice commands and a laser display projected onto their hand. The idea was to cut down on time spent staring at smartphone screens.
But the Ai Pin, which began shipping to customers last spring, was a flop.
Reviewers criticised the product, with the artificial intelligence software often giving wrong answers or taking a long time to respond, while the pin’s batteries sometimes overheated. Humane had hoped to sell 100,000 pins in its first year but got only around 10,000 orders. At one point, the company told customers to stop using their charging cases because of the fire risk.
Last year, Humane hired an investment bank to sell itself, while also seeking new funding. The startup sought a sale price of more than US$1bil (RM4.44bil).
On Tuesday, a letter posted to Humane’s website said the pins would no longer work at the end of this month and customer data would be deleted. “Our business priorities have shifted,” the letter said.
HP, which sells an estimated 53 million PCs a year, has said it wants to add AI capabilities to its laptops to make them more useful. Last year, HP worked with Microsoft to develop a line of AI computers called Copilot+ PCs.
In its announcement, HP said it would use Humane’s technology to become a more “experience-led company”. Humane’s workers will be part of a new innovation lab called HP IQ, which will focus on “building an intelligent ecosystem across HP’s products and services”. Chaudhri and Bongiorno will join the company, as will the majority of the startup’s employees, an HP spokesperson said.
“We are investing and innovating aggressively in new AI-powered capabilities and software,” Enrique Lores, president and CEO of HP, said during a call with analysts in November. “We will focus on delivering a cutting-edge AI-powered tech.” – ©2025 The New York Times Company
