Humane, the ambitious start-up behind the AI pin device aimed at replacing smartphones one day, agreed to sell parts of his company to HP for $ 116 million, the companies said Tuesday.
HP said it was planning to acquire the 'AI options' of Humane, including the software platform, intellectual property, patents and some employees. The AI pin is closed, Humane said in a message to customers.
The deal appears a fall for the high-flying start-up, which heavily promoted the $ 699-pin with advertisements, a TED talk and in Paris Fashion Week with super models. Humane raised $ 240 million in financing high -profile investors, including Marc Benioff, the Chief Executive of Salesforce and his counterpart at OpenAI, Sam Altman, the company appreciates $ 850 million before it released a product.
Humane was made by Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, founders of husband and woman who previously worked at Apple. The couple imagined a portable device that people on their clothing would cut and communicate with the use of speech assignments and projected a laser display on their hand. The idea was to reduce the time that was spent staring at smartphone screens.
But the AI -pin, which started to send to customers last spring, was a flop.
Reviewers criticized the product, where the AI software often gave the wrong answers or lasts a long time to respond, while the batteries of the pin sometimes get overheated. Humane had hoped to sell 100,000 pins in the first year, but only received around 10,000 orders. At a certain point the company told customers to stop using their loading cases due to the fire risk.
Last year Humane hired an investment bank to sell himself, while he was also looking for new financing. The start-up was looking for a selling price of more than $ 1 billion.
On Tuesday, a letter said on the Humane website that the pins would no longer work at the end of this month and that customer data would be deleted. “Our business priorities have shifted,” said the letter.
HP, which sells an estimated 53 million PCs per year, has said that the AI options wants to add 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 his announcement, HP said it would use Humane's technology to become a more 'experience -led company'. The Humane employees will be part of a new innovation lab called HP IQ, which will focus on “building an intelligent ecosystem for HP products and services.” Mr. Chaudhri and Mrs. Bongiorno will become a member of the company, just like the majority of the employees of the start-up, a spokeswoman for HP said.
“We invest and innovate aggressively in new AI-driven possibilities and software,” said Enrique Lores, President and Chief Executive of HP, during a phone call with analysts in November. “We will concentrate on supplying an advanced AI-driven technology.”
