AI Wearables 1.0: Was Humane’s AI Pin too ambitious?

Equity

TechCrunch

Founders, Silicon Valley, Finance, Ipo, Vc, Technology, Business News, Startups, Business, Venture Capital, News, Stock Market, Entrepreneurship, Techcrunch

4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Humane’s AI Pin, which promised to replace your smartphone with a sleek wearable device, is officially dead. After a rocky launch, negative reviews, and returns outpacing sales, the startup is shutting down and selling its assets to HP for $116 million – less than half of what it raised. But what’s next for Humane’s tech? On today's episode of Equity, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff and Anthony Ha are breaking down the week’s tech and startup headlines, including what HP might do with Humane’s resources and talent and how, as Max put it, the AI Pin was clearly ahead of its time. Listen to the full episode to hear about: The people in Elon Musk’s DOGE universe, the AI behind it, and the potential future of AI-powered government initiatives The new AI lab contenders, Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machines Lab, and whether VCs are putting more stock in talent than actual results The Uber v. DoorDash lawsuit over “anti-competitive tactics” And why Duolingo’s mascot getting killed off in a Cybertruck crash is oddly working in the brand’s favor Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is presented by Invest Puerto Rico.
0:03.4	If you believe your business can go anywhere, Puerto Rico is the place.
0:20.6	Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups.
0:25.0	Today is Friday, February 21st. I'm Kirsten Koresak, a transportation editor at TechCrunch.
0:30.6	I'm Max Zeph, a senior reporter at TechCrunch. And I'm Anthony Ha, the weekend editor at TechCrunch.
0:36.2	I also have a 1400-day streak in Duolingo, which I mentioned because Duolingo has been in the headlines recently,
0:43.3	because Duo, the mascot of Duolingo, has been killed by a cyber truck.
0:48.3	This was actually posted.
0:49.3	This isn't like a user-generated thing.
0:51.3	This is something the CEO posted on TikTok as kind of a marketing stunt.
0:56.9	And I mean, part of it just seems like this very absurdist thing where they like to play with
1:01.7	duo and just have weird things happen to the owl. But as Amanda, I think, pointed out in the
1:06.9	story about it, this also just seems like a kind of a little way to kind of like nudge Elon Musk in as well, too,
1:13.5	to kind of be like, hey, if you're not feeling great about the state of things, this is one way
1:17.3	to sort of manifest it.
1:18.7	Chiricina Max, have you guys been mourning, Duo?
1:20.9	Yes, absolutely.
1:22.2	But I think it's important to note here that at first when I saw the headline in the story,
1:28.8	because her headline was Duolingo killed its mascot with a cyber truck and it's going weirdly
1:33.1	well. And I was like, oh, no, why would this happen? And I see the tactic here is to bring it back
1:39.8	to life, right, by actually participating in the app, which is pretty clever.
1:45.7	Right. It's just another way that Duolingo has gamified its app is just like to bring Duo back.
	...

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