HP will acquire assets from Humane Inc., the maker of the wearable Ai Pin introduced in late 2023, for US$116 million.
The deal will include the majority of Humane's employees in addition to its software platform and intellectual property, the company said Tuesday. It will not include Humane's Ai Pin device business, which will be wound down, an HP spokesperson said.
Humane's team, including founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, will form a new division at HP to help integrate artificial intelligence into the company's personal computers, printers, and connected conference rooms, said Tuan Tran, who leads HP's AI initiatives. Chaudhri and Bongiorno were design and software engineers at Apple before founding the startup.
In April 2024, Humane launched a much-hyped wearable device meant to allow users to access AI models, calls, and texts via voice or gesture. The startup pitched the Ai Pin as an eventual smartphone replacement.
But the device met a cascade of negative reviews, reports of glitches, and a "quality issue" that led to a risk of fire. The San Francisco-based startup had raised over US$230 million and counted backers such as Salesforce Inc. CEO Marc Benioff.
Humane, in a note to customers, said it had stopped selling the Ai Pin and existing devices would no longer connect to the company's servers after noon San Francisco time on Feb. 28. "We strongly encourage you to sync your Ai Pin over Wi-Fi and download any stored pictures, videos and notes" before the deadline, or the data will be lost, Humane said in the statement.
Humane had been looking for a buyer for the business as early as May 2024, when it sought a price of US$750 million to US$1 billion.
Tran said he was particularly impressed with aspects of Humane's design, such as the ability to orchestrate AI models running both on-device and in the cloud. The deal is expected to close at the end of the month, HP said.
A few months ago, Humane backed away from its hardware focus, instead rebranding around what it called Cosmos, an AI operating system for a slew of devices in the home and on the go. The software, the company said, had a new type of architecture built around AI agents. HP could use this underlying technology to help power its own future devices.
HP has touted cost, security, and speed as benefits of delivering some generative AI features locally rather than through the cloud. Last year, it launched a line of computers with semiconductors optimized for on-device AI.
"There will be a time and place for pure AI devices," Tran said. "But there is going to be AI in all our devices — that's how we can help our business customers be more productive."
