Featured Article The Alphabet X spinout will release the Iyo One this winter, starting at $599
Comment Image Credits: Iyo A month after launching its first product, Humane’s co-founders have reportedly put their well-funded startup on the market . While even the firm’s biggest cheerleaders didn’t expect the Ai Pin to change the world in such a short timeframe, few of its many detractors expected things to go so sideways, so quickly.
Humane’s biggest competitor, the Rabbit R1, didn’t fare much better. Shortly after launch, the generative AI-fueled handheld was savaged by critics. The most salient critique of the “half-baked” device was that it could been an app, rather than a $200 piece of hardware.
The excitement ahead of both devices’ launch is proof-positive that there is interest in a new form factor that leverages LLMs (large language models) in a way that is genuinely useful in our daily lives. At the moment, however, it’s safe to stay that no one has yet stuck the landing.
Iyo represents a third form factor in the push to deliver standalone generative AI devices. Unlike Humane, which attempted to introduce a wholly new form factor by way of a lapel pin, Iyo is building its technology into an already wildly successful category: the Bluetooth earbud.
When the Iyo One launches this winter, the company will be able to build on several years of consumer education around the integration of assistants like Alexa and Siri into headphones. The leap from that to more sophisticated LLM-based models is far shorter than one like the Ai Pin, which requires a fundamental rethink of how we interact with our devices.
Much like Humane and Rabbit, Iyo’s founding predates the current AI hype cycle. The company traces its history all the way back to the before times of 2019.
“I saw all these people I knew in AI, three different research orgs inside Google, all the external people, OpenAI and others all making this incredible progress with these language models, all independently,” founder and CEO Jason Rugolo told TechCrunch. “I realize it’s algebra and data, and no one has a corner on […]
Iyo thinks its gen AI earbuds can succeed where Humane and Rabbit stumbled
