> Device Timeline: Your Ai Pin will continue to function normally until 12pm PST on February 28, 2025. After this date, it will no longer connect to Humane’s servers, and .Center access will be fully retired.
> Device Features: Your Ai Pin features will no longer include calling, messaging, Ai queries/responses, or cloud access.
For a $700 device that was on the market for less than a year, that is a not a stellar way to treat your customers. Fortunately it seems there were very few of those.
it looks like the company was already "transitioning" - $116M for 200 people in AI, and that nowdays when an NVDA or PLTR employee is $70M+ each. It looks like they were trying and failed to get $750M-$1B just half a year ago, and even that would normally be a bargain for 200 people.
If the hardware requires software that is not available for self service, then the customer is entitled for full refund at any time.
In other words if the hardware is just an accessory for providing service through software then the money the user pays for the hardware should be considered a refundable deposit.
Sounds like a good intention with bad consequences. It would incentivise operating systems to become subscriptions too. Plus, it would never happen. If a company goes bankrupt they can’t buy back the devices.
I’d rather they were forced to release their software to the public, making it a requirement without which bankruptcy or sales would be refused by regulatory agencies. That way hobbyists could still get them to work, perhaps even launch a new company to revive the old devices (reducing e-waste). Additionally, we could detect if they had been doing anything shady with the data.
Then the hardware is not a purchase, but a lease (without time limits). And the vendor would have to refund lease payment if it stops working.
If you want to go the other way, a hardware that requires a paid service should be jail-breakable. If the designated service stops working, then the service should be open-sourced. (We would love this on HN but just imagine the OpenSource overload engineers like us would be overwhelmed with to the point no one would try.)
Why is this regulation necessary? You can just choose not to buy products whose future you’re skeptical of.
In this case, Humane would likely go bankrupt rather than pay out the refunds your regulation would require, so it would still be ineffective in protecting consumers.
> After the shutdown, offline features like “battery level” will still work, Humane says, but “any function that requires cloud connectivity like voice interactions, AI responses, and .Center access” will not.
I'd really like to know if the Humane PR flack typed that with a straight face.
My prediction is that HP will make some half-hearted attempts to do something with it for a while, and then will sell it at a loss to LG. LG will use it in one or two of their smart TVs and then release it as open source, at which point it will be forgotten. (ref: WebOS)
imagine an ai tv that was given the prompt to continuously encourage viewers to sign up for LG/HP instant pixel delivery service and that it should be noted that many viewers feel great satisfaction with the service, and are frequently considered the most attractive people within your area.
If it's functional, I'd love to use a laser projection on my couch when I misplace my TV remote. Especially if it's able to adapt to my TV's current context
> Humane’s AI platform Cosmos, backed by an incredible group of engineers, will help us create an intelligent ecosystem across all HP devices from AI PCs to smart printers and connected conference rooms. This will unlock new levels of functionality for our customers and deliver on the promises of AI.
“It looks like you are printing out a document that our AI detected ans urgent. Please subscribe to our Urgent Document print plan for $30/month (billed centennially) to re-enable printing.”
So if I'm reading this right, every single customer of Humane is going to have their device bricked in ten days? Wow, I bet both of them are going to be seriously pissed!
These would have also been terms that HP agreed to or even proposed. It's also a taint on their brand that they're not willing to take care of Humane's customers with even a refund for recent customers in a 116mil transaction..
If you bought one anytime after the initial reviews just what were you doing?
I just can’t imagine there was anyone who both knew it existed and didn’t know it was garbage.
The only reason I can see anyone having bought one at that point is because they wanted to own an interesting little failure in gadget history. And even then just buy one used, there was no point in spending $700.
> And no refunds for purchases made before Nov 15, 2024.
For those with premium credit cards, this is why I suggest always putting electronics on that card. In my experience, the extended warranty coverage kicks in if and when the original merchant is unwilling or unable to cover their initial warranty (as well as for 12 months thereafter); this is clearly a violation of fitness for purpose, so I'd expect zero issue in getting this refunded by the CC folk.
It may not have been technical junk but HP bought Palm three years after the iPhone came out. I loved my Palm Vx but that is truly hilarious timing. From a business perspective, in 2010 they were complete junk.
Like, I think they recognize that printing is a dying business. They want to pivot to something else, but they have no idea what to pivot to. They keep buying out other companies, but then effectively canceling the product.
No one is getting paid. Everyone involved is taking a loss. Humane turned $200M of venture capital into a $100M company. At best, some investors are getting $0.50 on the dollar.
Humane raised a total of $241M from VCs. It is pretty much guaranteed that no employee at the company, and not even the founders, will see a single dollar of that $116M. Investors always get first dibs.
Referring to the fact that they were apparently taking more returns than sales by the end. So not negative in total, but over a given timeframe. (hence: "by the end")
Gruber[1] posted that Bloomberg reported[2]: "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."
So they'll hang around as some sort of director-level Thought Leaders or something? Sounds like a safe and lucrative landing.
Which means they'll be shoved into an office for a year before being encouraged to move on. There's not really a role there for them, they were a company that made a chatgpt wrapper, the idea that they have a clue how to run an actual AI based operation is laughable.
We are looking at another gold rush where the US patent office lets you patent absolutely anything
I still remember a few of the previous ones, like ”A mundane everyday thing…on a computer!” and ”The same thing every company has been doing for decades…but over the internet!”
Be mentally prepared for a few decades of stifled innovation, as every perfectly-ordinary-thing-but-with-ai patent is suppressing the market
I mean, if you look at Imran Chaudhri's personal homepage (http://www.imranchaudhri.com) I think you'll get a sense of how valuable those patents might be.
It's easy to point and laugh at a failed product with puzzling features, but I have respect for what Humane tried to do. They attempted to produce an AI product and get it to stand on its own two legs (metaphorically). They didn't have an annoying CEO grandstanding about the amazing tech while handwaving away hallucinations and common bugs, something Valley leadership does way too much of.
They didn't start with a VC-friendly strategy of free-then-paid to acquire market share. There was an off-putting monthly subscription right at the start. No confusion about what this product's business model or target customer was.
Contrast that to the ham-fisted way Apple, Android and Microsoft are attempting to bootstrap their AI offerings by jamming it into successful hardware products and sneaking users into it with dark patterns to opt them in.
> They didn't have an annoying CEO grandstanding about the amazing tech while handwaving away hallucinations and common bugs, something Valley leadership does way too much of.
In every single public appearance, Imran was clearly trying to project an image of some Zen master version of Steve Jobs. I think you have a massive misread of this company and the hubris of its founders.
> They didn't have an annoying CEO grandstanding about the amazing tech while handwaving away hallucinations and common bugs, something Valley leadership does way too much of.
>They didn't have an annoying CEO grandstanding about the amazing tech while handwaving away hallucinations and common bugs, something Valley leadership does way too much of.
> Many current and former employees said Mr. Chaudhri and Ms. Bongiorno preferred positivity over criticism, leading them to disregard warnings about the Ai Pin’s poor battery life and power consumption. A senior software engineer was dismissed after raising questions about the product, they said, while others left out of frustration.
> One [issue] was the device’s laser display, which consumed tremendous power and would cause the pin to overheat. Before showing the gadget to prospective partners and investors, Humane executives often chilled it on ice packs so it would last longer, three people familiar with the demonstrations said.
> When employees expressed concerns about the heat, they said, Humane’s founders replied that software improvements reducing power use would fix it. Mr. Chaudhri, who led design, wanted to keep the gadget’s sleek design, three people said.
> In January, Humane laid off about 10 employees. A month later, a senior software engineer was let go after she questioned whether the Ai Pin would be ready by April. In a company meeting after the dismissal, Mr. Chaudhri and Ms. Bongiorno said the employee had violated policy by talking negatively about Humane, two attendees said.
I'll agree with you on that, but I think there's a really important thing that we have to also say about their business model: they developed and launched a product they knew couldn't live up to its billing or its price point. It shouldn't ever have made it beyond its conceptual investigation. Put it on the back burner, try again in five or ten years.
>they developed and launched a product they knew couldn't live up to its billing or its price point
Most of the tech sector has this problem, which is why they rug pull customers with the price the second the VC money dries up. We're inured to seeing 10-20% price increases every year for SaaS, because the acquisition price point was artifically low.
I'm glad a company decided to just set a "market price" for once. Unfortunately it failed and rugpulled customers by doing so.
This is really an advertisement for on-device ML. If shutting down the servers bricks your device, I’m less interested in expensive fledgling products.
Interesting they thought they could disrupt phones: devices with almost 20 years of iterative improvements, extremely mature app stores, tons of functionality, fast ubiquitous internet, etc.
You couldn't even connect the Ai Pin to your phone ?! Lock-in makes sense but it was a very risky bet.
Huh, it is weird to think of smartphones as entrenched incumbents. Of course, they are. But it is weird (they are the first type of device where I was familiar with a world before them).
There's some revisionism here: having the internet in your pocket anywhere you went was a clear upgrade. Projecting a screen on your palm with low resolution was a clear downgrade.
Disruption is incredibly difficult but this product was giving off Juicero vibes from the start.
Did anyone think the ai pin would go any other way? This was bound to happen the moment it was announced. The rabbit and others are also probably heading in that direction. The hardware just isn’t quite there yet and so is the software
It's also, well, unclear that it is a thing that anyone much _wants_. "What if a phone but with no screen and Siri listens to you constantly" just isn't an attractive proposition for most people.
While the device and company were clearly flawed and there wasn't even a tiny niche that seemed to love the product, some part of me admires their audacity in trying to do something transformational.
There's a lot to post-mortem here, but failures like these are part of an entrepreneurial culture.
It's incredible how easy it was to raise money in that time frame and how hard it is to raise money now. They would throw huge sums of money at you for the dumbest ideas.
It's important to note that the AI Pin powered by ChatGPT was a bit of a pivot. If ChatGPT never came out, they wouldn't have even had that. It would have been more like having a dedicated Siri or Alexa device to do really basic stuff with. I can't imagine how much worse the product was going to be. What investor say that early pitch and work and was like, "sign me up?"
I loved the interface Humane AI wanted the world to work through. But I hated the subscription fee, the lack of wifi, and the reliance on modem connectivity. It was supposed to be a wearable device (that connects to your phone). It was supposed to complement your smartwatch with an on-demand screen in the palm of your hands. It was supposed to be AI augmented, but not AI centered.
I am glad someone will take the tech. But I am upset it is HP and I doubt they have a vision for the product.
It's been different companies at different times, but over the last 20 years HP does seem to have been particularly prolific at buying weird mostly-dead junk.
This reminds me a lot of the 3Com "Audrey" [0]. And of course HP now owns that as well. I have some bittersweet memories of hacking on that thing after the services were terminated. Maybe this could follow that afterlife legacy.
>The end of an AI hardware experiment. Lots of reasons this didn’t do well, from trying to get people to do something they don’t already do (wear a computer on their clothes) to poor execution. The research @IrenaCronin and I do shows glasses are the form factor but they are still years from having decent all color displays. Until then it will be hard to get people to use much other than their phones.
> Lots of reasons this didn’t do well, from trying to get people to do something they don’t already do (wear a computer on their clothes) to poor execution.
Huh, has Scoble... matured and grown? Got to admit I haven't been paying attention to him for a long time, but the above is discordant, coming from Google Glass Superfan Number One.
On his Twitter account he seems to have rebranded, from Metaverse/Spatial computing enthusiast to a general AI person.
Frustrating, because his "Next year Apple will..." predictions in his AR/VR phase were wild and utterly out there. I remember he predicted Apple Glasses the size of small sunglasses were coming next year. There was also a prediction of a completely transparent iPhone, just a pane of glass. I still wonder how that would have worked in his mind.
He spends his days on Musk's Nazi platform preaching the "VR any minute" gospel to the 50K people still using their Apple Vision Pros. It makes for the funniest circle jerk in tech circles. Robert is 1/6th the man he was as a paid Microsoft shill. He never recovered his credibility after his Google Glass shower scene made the social media rounds, and now has no one to sit at his feet listening to his deep tech wisdom except the VR die hards and the engagement farmers.
If you thought HP's crapware was insultingly bad before, wait until they start putting some 8b models trained on their marketing bullshit to helpfully shill wherever a sidebar can be planted.
Can’t wait for the inevitable AI enabled printers. Bonus points if it’s a multimodal vision model and requires and dance per printed page. (Plus subscription ofc)
I would absolutely love to know how many API requests they get a day from users who don’t work at the company and aren’t related to people who work at the company.
It's phrased in a way that indicates the Humane brand and company is not part of the deal? Just assets (patents, software, staff) but not the name or brand? I would not be surprised if it rose from the ashes at some point.
Hopefully it will also improve the product design engineering quality at HP. While the AI pin is a bit useless the industrial product design is at a high level. From what I remember it’s mostly an core of Apple engineers
The charging case had to be recalled because it was a potential fire hazard, and the pin itself had a tendency to overheat during normal use. Hardly a success story on the hardware front.
If any VCs who "invested" some of the $230 million into the dumbest product ever from obvious morons would like to instead invest with me, I'm pretty confident I can do better than a 0.5x return!
The parent is right, investors would almost certainly have 1x preference, which means they get back the first $230M in an acquisition. The valuation doesn't matter if you exit for less than money in.
Founders and employees would get nothing out of this (aside from whatever HP is giving them directly as incentive to stick around).
You meant to write "generate $-115 million" I think. I'd start by putting all the money under a mattress which is already doing way better than Humane. Then I'd try to think of something fun to make.
It's not actually.
The problem was not marketing. The problem was the product itself.
No marketing could have helped them, as the product was so bad.
The good reminder here, is to build something people actually want.
> Ai Pin will still allow for offline features like battery level
> https://support.humane.com/hc/en-us/articles/34243204841997-...
The only feature they could think of was “battery level”? That’s hilarious
Direct link to the FAQ entry:
https://support.humane.com/hc/en-us/articles/34243204841997-...
I like that it says “battery level, etc”. I’d really like to see the full list of features.
I think it might be the list.
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Pretty sure it will let you buy a new ink cartridge too.
It’s like the Rick and Morty bit about the butter bot.
“What is my purpose?”
“You say your battery level.”
“Oh my God.”
At least the butter bot does something useful. This is more like a machine who's only function is to turn itself off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useless_machine
I interviewed with more than one corp chatbot maker and punchline would be "You answer leave policy questions".
At least the butter bot has some utility to someone.
That's emblematic of their entire business arc.
"What's the most pointless matter-of-fact thing we could say/do in any given situation, just for the sake of the checkmark of having said/done it?"
> Device Timeline: Your Ai Pin will continue to function normally until 12pm PST on February 28, 2025. After this date, it will no longer connect to Humane’s servers, and .Center access will be fully retired.
> Device Features: Your Ai Pin features will no longer include calling, messaging, Ai queries/responses, or cloud access.
For a $700 device that was on the market for less than a year, that is a not a stellar way to treat your customers. Fortunately it seems there were very few of those.
[0] https://support.humane.com/hc/en-us/articles/34374173951373-...
What customers?
> Humane’s daily returns are outpacing sales
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/7/24211339/humane-ai-pin-mor...
And the results here are exactly why I will never be an early adopter of a $700 AI gadget
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[flagged]
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> We understand this transition may be difficult
You have to be a right knob to describe this as a “transition”
Death is a transition, I guess.
it looks like the company was already "transitioning" - $116M for 200 people in AI, and that nowdays when an NVDA or PLTR employee is $70M+ each. It looks like they were trying and failed to get $750M-$1B just half a year ago, and even that would normally be a bargain for 200 people.
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I have this regulation idea:
If the hardware requires software that is not available for self service, then the customer is entitled for full refund at any time.
In other words if the hardware is just an accessory for providing service through software then the money the user pays for the hardware should be considered a refundable deposit.
You should propose it! I hear the CFPB is looking for new ways to protect consumers.
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Sounds like a good intention with bad consequences. It would incentivise operating systems to become subscriptions too. Plus, it would never happen. If a company goes bankrupt they can’t buy back the devices.
I’d rather they were forced to release their software to the public, making it a requirement without which bankruptcy or sales would be refused by regulatory agencies. That way hobbyists could still get them to work, perhaps even launch a new company to revive the old devices (reducing e-waste). Additionally, we could detect if they had been doing anything shady with the data.
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Then the hardware is not a purchase, but a lease (without time limits). And the vendor would have to refund lease payment if it stops working.
If you want to go the other way, a hardware that requires a paid service should be jail-breakable. If the designated service stops working, then the service should be open-sourced. (We would love this on HN but just imagine the OpenSource overload engineers like us would be overwhelmed with to the point no one would try.)
> If the hardware requires software that is not available for self service, then the customer is entitled for full refund at any time.
If a service it depends on goes away within X years (5? 10?) you're owed a prorated refund.
Why is this regulation necessary? You can just choose not to buy products whose future you’re skeptical of.
In this case, Humane would likely go bankrupt rather than pay out the refunds your regulation would require, so it would still be ineffective in protecting consumers.
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Oligarchs will say no
Not a humane way to treat your customers…
> $700
Plus monthly subscription.
The Verge on this:
https://www.theverge.com/news/614883/humane-ai-hp-acquisitio...
> After the shutdown, offline features like “battery level” will still work, Humane says, but “any function that requires cloud connectivity like voice interactions, AI responses, and .Center access” will not.
I'd really like to know if the Humane PR flack typed that with a straight face.
The charitable interpretation is that they wanted to assure buyers that they would still be able to show off the laser projector to their friends :)
But no, I wouldn't be able to write that sentence myself without wanting to find the closest hole to hide out of embarrassment.
ChatGPT can!
"Battery levels are fine. Jump on in!"
My prediction is that HP will make some half-hearted attempts to do something with it for a while, and then will sell it at a loss to LG. LG will use it in one or two of their smart TVs and then release it as open source, at which point it will be forgotten. (ref: WebOS)
Ugh smart TVs powered by Humane by HP x LG makes me want to throw all my electronics into a volcano
imagine an ai tv that was given the prompt to continuously encourage viewers to sign up for LG/HP instant pixel delivery service and that it should be noted that many viewers feel great satisfaction with the service, and are frequently considered the most attractive people within your area.
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If it's functional, I'd love to use a laser projection on my couch when I misplace my TV remote. Especially if it's able to adapt to my TV's current context
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I think I'd prefer to just go live in a cave.
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Ugh smart… makes me want to throw all my electronics into a volcano
But yeah what you said is way worse
For what it's worth LG stuck with WebOS. https://www.lg.com/us/webos
The LG version never looked like anything Palm/HP put out, which makes me wonder what LG actually bought, but it's still around.
> Humane’s AI platform Cosmos, backed by an incredible group of engineers, will help us create an intelligent ecosystem across all HP devices from AI PCs to smart printers and connected conference rooms. This will unlock new levels of functionality for our customers and deliver on the promises of AI.
I can't wait for an HP AI printer
“It looks like you are printing out a document that our AI detected ans urgent. Please subscribe to our Urgent Document print plan for $30/month (billed centennially) to re-enable printing.”
WebOS in the TVs is still going isn't it't? I have a TV that uses it, and it's great
WebOS is far more superior than android tv
WebOS is great and LG promises at least 5 years of updates.
Their smart magic control is best in class too.
Is this the playbook they followed for Palm? I can't remember who ended up with it in the end. But at least Palm had a decent operating system.
So if I'm reading this right, every single customer of Humane is going to have their device bricked in ten days? Wow, I bet both of them are going to be seriously pissed!
These would have also been terms that HP agreed to or even proposed. It's also a taint on their brand that they're not willing to take care of Humane's customers with even a refund for recent customers in a 116mil transaction..
And no refunds for purchases made before Nov 15, 2024.
If you bought one anytime after the initial reviews just what were you doing?
I just can’t imagine there was anyone who both knew it existed and didn’t know it was garbage.
The only reason I can see anyone having bought one at that point is because they wanted to own an interesting little failure in gadget history. And even then just buy one used, there was no point in spending $700.
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> And no refunds for purchases made before Nov 15, 2024.
For those with premium credit cards, this is why I suggest always putting electronics on that card. In my experience, the extended warranty coverage kicks in if and when the original merchant is unwilling or unable to cover their initial warranty (as well as for 12 months thereafter); this is clearly a violation of fitness for purpose, so I'd expect zero issue in getting this refunded by the CC folk.
"both of them?" What do you mean?
> every single customer of Humane
Working at HP is the punishment for dumping this product onto people for $700.
HP, noted compulsive buyer of complete junk, in buying complete junk shocker (see Autonomy, Palm, etc).
Palm was the opposite of complete junk. WebOS was absolutely ahead of its time back then and the pre devices were great
It may not have been technical junk but HP bought Palm three years after the iPhone came out. I loved my Palm Vx but that is truly hilarious timing. From a business perspective, in 2010 they were complete junk.
HP is a bizarre company.
Like, I think they recognize that printing is a dying business. They want to pivot to something else, but they have no idea what to pivot to. They keep buying out other companies, but then effectively canceling the product.
To be fair, HP buying Compaq in the early 2000s was pretty huge, considering they are doing decently well today because of their PC market share.
$116 million is a pretty nice payday for a product that never remotely lived up to the hype and had, by the end, negative numbers of customers.
No one is getting paid. Everyone involved is taking a loss. Humane turned $200M of venture capital into a $100M company. At best, some investors are getting $0.50 on the dollar.
Do people in the company need to pay back their salaries ?
I doubt so, that's 100M+ USD that disappeared.
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Humane raised a total of $241M from VCs. It is pretty much guaranteed that no employee at the company, and not even the founders, will see a single dollar of that $116M. Investors always get first dibs.
Those founders milked their “ex Apple” creds to the limit. I was at Apple and they were just bozos
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Those are some sad numbers.
>negative numbers of customers
You're being facetious, right? Or is there indeed some definition of customers that allows for negative numbers?
Referring to the fact that they were apparently taking more returns than sales by the end. So not negative in total, but over a given timeframe. (hence: "by the end")
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ntPxdWAWq8
:%s/Cloud/AI/g
So this is just an acquihire right? Can't imagine what HP will do with Humane's "AI software" (aka ChatGPT wrapper).
Gruber[1] posted that Bloomberg reported[2]: "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."
So they'll hang around as some sort of director-level Thought Leaders or something? Sounds like a safe and lucrative landing.
1: https://daringfireball.net
2: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-18/hp-116-mi...
HP AI-enabled printer?
What, did the state of California ask them to develop a new punishment for tech workers convicted of murder? Is Hans Reiser being tortured with this?
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Is this what they call falling upwards?
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This isn't obvious at all but you can click the star next to an item that's "Linked" on DF (where the title goes to another site) to get a permalink to the item on DF itself! https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/18/hp-buys-humane
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Which means they'll be shoved into an office for a year before being encouraged to move on. There's not really a role there for them, they were a company that made a chatgpt wrapper, the idea that they have a clue how to run an actual AI based operation is laughable.
AI Printers, hell yeah brother
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HP printers are already some of the most anti-consumer printers on the market. Can't wait to see what this group of people manages to achieve. /s
More like IP acquisition and shelving for future IP litigation if AI bubble continues.
This is the only thing that makes sense to me.
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It seems like that and the 300ish patents. The patents themselves could be worth quite a bit.
It's possible they think the OS and the team that built it could have value if put to better uses than building an AI pin.
We are looking at another gold rush where the US patent office lets you patent absolutely anything
I still remember a few of the previous ones, like ”A mundane everyday thing…on a computer!” and ”The same thing every company has been doing for decades…but over the internet!”
Be mentally prepared for a few decades of stifled innovation, as every perfectly-ordinary-thing-but-with-ai patent is suppressing the market
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I mean, if you look at Imran Chaudhri's personal homepage (http://www.imranchaudhri.com) I think you'll get a sense of how valuable those patents might be.
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It's easy to point and laugh at a failed product with puzzling features, but I have respect for what Humane tried to do. They attempted to produce an AI product and get it to stand on its own two legs (metaphorically). They didn't have an annoying CEO grandstanding about the amazing tech while handwaving away hallucinations and common bugs, something Valley leadership does way too much of.
They didn't start with a VC-friendly strategy of free-then-paid to acquire market share. There was an off-putting monthly subscription right at the start. No confusion about what this product's business model or target customer was.
Contrast that to the ham-fisted way Apple, Android and Microsoft are attempting to bootstrap their AI offerings by jamming it into successful hardware products and sneaking users into it with dark patterns to opt them in.
> They didn't have an annoying CEO grandstanding about the amazing tech while handwaving away hallucinations and common bugs, something Valley leadership does way too much of.
Did you forget that they released a video that proudly demonstrated the AI pin hallucinating the date of the eclipse? They then went back and memory-holed the mistake: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/13/23959473/humane-will-be-...
In every single public appearance, Imran was clearly trying to project an image of some Zen master version of Steve Jobs. I think you have a massive misread of this company and the hubris of its founders.
> They didn't have an annoying CEO grandstanding about the amazing tech while handwaving away hallucinations and common bugs, something Valley leadership does way too much of.
I dunno:
"Humane AI Pin founders banned internal criticism" https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/report-humane-ai-pin...
"The Disappearing Computer — and a World Where You Can Take AI Everywhere | Imran Chaudhri" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMsQO5u7-NQ
Given the contemporary hype level of consumer AI, this is well below my threshold for annoyance.
>They didn't have an annoying CEO grandstanding about the amazing tech while handwaving away hallucinations and common bugs, something Valley leadership does way too much of.
From The New York Times' coverage of the company (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/technology/humane-ai-pin....):
> Many current and former employees said Mr. Chaudhri and Ms. Bongiorno preferred positivity over criticism, leading them to disregard warnings about the Ai Pin’s poor battery life and power consumption. A senior software engineer was dismissed after raising questions about the product, they said, while others left out of frustration.
> One [issue] was the device’s laser display, which consumed tremendous power and would cause the pin to overheat. Before showing the gadget to prospective partners and investors, Humane executives often chilled it on ice packs so it would last longer, three people familiar with the demonstrations said.
> When employees expressed concerns about the heat, they said, Humane’s founders replied that software improvements reducing power use would fix it. Mr. Chaudhri, who led design, wanted to keep the gadget’s sleek design, three people said.
> In January, Humane laid off about 10 employees. A month later, a senior software engineer was let go after she questioned whether the Ai Pin would be ready by April. In a company meeting after the dismissal, Mr. Chaudhri and Ms. Bongiorno said the employee had violated policy by talking negatively about Humane, two attendees said.
A story that keeps delivering, thanks!
Not even sure now if man is a fraud or a complete delulu.
I'll agree with you on that, but I think there's a really important thing that we have to also say about their business model: they developed and launched a product they knew couldn't live up to its billing or its price point. It shouldn't ever have made it beyond its conceptual investigation. Put it on the back burner, try again in five or ten years.
>they developed and launched a product they knew couldn't live up to its billing or its price point
Most of the tech sector has this problem, which is why they rug pull customers with the price the second the VC money dries up. We're inured to seeing 10-20% price increases every year for SaaS, because the acquisition price point was artifically low.
I'm glad a company decided to just set a "market price" for once. Unfortunately it failed and rugpulled customers by doing so.
No, instead, they had two annoying CEOs who grandstanded their own egos.
This is really an advertisement for on-device ML. If shutting down the servers bricks your device, I’m less interested in expensive fledgling products.
I'm pretty amazed that they built a $700 device that can't do anything onboard beyond telling you what the battery level is.
$700 hardware can't do more than that?
To be fair it couldn’t reliably do more than that with the cloud.
I think it's more an advert for not being a fledgling product.
Interesting they thought they could disrupt phones: devices with almost 20 years of iterative improvements, extremely mature app stores, tons of functionality, fast ubiquitous internet, etc.
You couldn't even connect the Ai Pin to your phone ?! Lock-in makes sense but it was a very risky bet.
Essential viewing: Review of the Ai Pin - The Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed... For Now (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TitZV6k8zfA)
Huh, it is weird to think of smartphones as entrenched incumbents. Of course, they are. But it is weird (they are the first type of device where I was familiar with a world before them).
It's also interesting that, prior to the iPhone, no one would have thought that phones would disrupt the PC market.
There's some revisionism here: having the internet in your pocket anywhere you went was a clear upgrade. Projecting a screen on your palm with low resolution was a clear downgrade.
Disruption is incredibly difficult but this product was giving off Juicero vibes from the start.
That might also be because iPhone happened to coincide exactly when 3G mobile broadband internet became available.
Pre and post 3G mobile broadband were different worlds.
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Did anyone think the ai pin would go any other way? This was bound to happen the moment it was announced. The rabbit and others are also probably heading in that direction. The hardware just isn’t quite there yet and so is the software
It's also, well, unclear that it is a thing that anyone much _wants_. "What if a phone but with no screen and Siri listens to you constantly" just isn't an attractive proposition for most people.
While the device and company were clearly flawed and there wasn't even a tiny niche that seemed to love the product, some part of me admires their audacity in trying to do something transformational.
There's a lot to post-mortem here, but failures like these are part of an entrepreneurial culture.
Humane raised $230 million, sold at $116 million.
The folly of the capital allocators during this period was legendary.
It's incredible how easy it was to raise money in that time frame and how hard it is to raise money now. They would throw huge sums of money at you for the dumbest ideas.
It's important to note that the AI Pin powered by ChatGPT was a bit of a pivot. If ChatGPT never came out, they wouldn't have even had that. It would have been more like having a dedicated Siri or Alexa device to do really basic stuff with. I can't imagine how much worse the product was going to be. What investor say that early pitch and work and was like, "sign me up?"
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I loved the interface Humane AI wanted the world to work through. But I hated the subscription fee, the lack of wifi, and the reliance on modem connectivity. It was supposed to be a wearable device (that connects to your phone). It was supposed to complement your smartwatch with an on-demand screen in the palm of your hands. It was supposed to be AI augmented, but not AI centered.
I am glad someone will take the tech. But I am upset it is HP and I doubt they have a vision for the product.
HP is where things go to die.
(Since 1999 that is)
I thought that was IBM, so confusing anymore.
Broadcom became the ultimate necromancer when they acquired Computer Associates and digested them. OpenText is the smaller version.
It's been different companies at different times, but over the last 20 years HP does seem to have been particularly prolific at buying weird mostly-dead junk.
Does anyone else remember when the HP Way was a positive statement?
Coming soon to your next printer: navigate through menus with a pico projector sending dim light onto your outstretched palm...
Hell, forget printing - it can just beam a picture of your documents onto a nearby wall. Chalk up another patent from Imran!
After refilling your projector ink levels, ofcourse.
Honestly that might be better than the terrible 1 inch LCD screens some modern ink jets have.
This reminds me a lot of the 3Com "Audrey" [0]. And of course HP now owns that as well. I have some bittersweet memories of hacking on that thing after the services were terminated. Maybe this could follow that afterlife legacy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Com_Audrey
From Robert Scoble...
>The end of an AI hardware experiment. Lots of reasons this didn’t do well, from trying to get people to do something they don’t already do (wear a computer on their clothes) to poor execution. The research @IrenaCronin and I do shows glasses are the form factor but they are still years from having decent all color displays. Until then it will be hard to get people to use much other than their phones.
Whenever I see Robert Scoble's name this is all I can think of: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jwherrman/yes-you-can-w...
I tend to think more of https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/doree/woman-accuses-rob... but yours is also on my mind whenever the name pops up.
Something something lesser monster in the backrooms vibe is what I feel now when I see that picture.
Is Scoble still relevant?
Lol "glasses are the form factor".
Ignoring the massive industry of people actively having their eyeballs cut open and lasered just to avoid wearing glasses.
Sunglasses, protective eyewear, and glasses for blocking blue light are things.
> Lots of reasons this didn’t do well, from trying to get people to do something they don’t already do (wear a computer on their clothes) to poor execution.
Huh, has Scoble... matured and grown? Got to admit I haven't been paying attention to him for a long time, but the above is discordant, coming from Google Glass Superfan Number One.
On his Twitter account he seems to have rebranded, from Metaverse/Spatial computing enthusiast to a general AI person.
Frustrating, because his "Next year Apple will..." predictions in his AR/VR phase were wild and utterly out there. I remember he predicted Apple Glasses the size of small sunglasses were coming next year. There was also a prediction of a completely transparent iPhone, just a pane of glass. I still wonder how that would have worked in his mind.
He spends his days on Musk's Nazi platform preaching the "VR any minute" gospel to the 50K people still using their Apple Vision Pros. It makes for the funniest circle jerk in tech circles. Robert is 1/6th the man he was as a paid Microsoft shill. He never recovered his credibility after his Google Glass shower scene made the social media rounds, and now has no one to sit at his feet listening to his deep tech wisdom except the VR die hards and the engagement farmers.
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that's a name I haven't heard in well over decade
I can imagine the conversation at the meetings:
Humane rep: Here’s what we can do. We can just shut it down. The fine print says we can.
HP rep: Excellent! You’ll fit right in here at HP!
More like the HP rep saying “any chance we can still bill them 1 dollar a month ?”
I can't believe they were able to squeeze $118 million out of this scam. There ain't no justice.
If you thought HP's crapware was insultingly bad before, wait until they start putting some 8b models trained on their marketing bullshit to helpfully shill wherever a sidebar can be planted.
"Don't you want to subscribe to your own printer? We'll reactivate this device after you subscribe to your own printer which you purchased."
Can’t wait for the inevitable AI enabled printers. Bonus points if it’s a multimodal vision model and requires and dance per printed page. (Plus subscription ofc)
Of course. It definitely wasn't worth $1B as I said before [0] when they tried to sell at that valuation. [1]
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/6/24172718/humane-ai-pin-sel...
> highly skilled technical talent, and intellectual property with more than 300 patents and patent applications.
The only reason a dinosaur like HP is even buying out this no-name player.
Dozens of worldwide users will be devastated by this news.
I would absolutely love to know how many API requests they get a day from users who don’t work at the company and aren’t related to people who work at the company.
It's phrased in a way that indicates the Humane brand and company is not part of the deal? Just assets (patents, software, staff) but not the name or brand? I would not be surprised if it rose from the ashes at some point.
That IP has negative value. Why would anyone want it?
I'd guess the founders want to keep it because of a sense of pride/attachment.
Hopefully it will also improve the product design engineering quality at HP. While the AI pin is a bit useless the industrial product design is at a high level. From what I remember it’s mostly an core of Apple engineers
The charging case had to be recalled because it was a potential fire hazard, and the pin itself had a tendency to overheat during normal use. Hardly a success story on the hardware front.
lol, no it’s not.
The basic premise that people would want to wear a device as a pin is an industrial design failure.
The entire product is bad industrial design. Being built with nice materials is not automatically good industrial design.
It was a scam destined to fail and HP is making a stupid acquisition of worthless tech.
I thought they specifically outsourced the design to another company (Teenage Engineering).
That was the Rabbit R1, a similar AI wearable which similarly didn't work.
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Congrats on turning $230M USD into $116M USD.
Sounds easy but it took 6 years of hard work!
If any VCs who "invested" some of the $230 million into the dumbest product ever from obvious morons would like to instead invest with me, I'm pretty confident I can do better than a 0.5x return!
It's not a 0.5x. It's much lower -- $230 million was the amount raised, not the valuation. It's closer to 0.1-0.2x.
The parent is right, investors would almost certainly have 1x preference, which means they get back the first $230M in an acquisition. The valuation doesn't matter if you exit for less than money in.
Founders and employees would get nothing out of this (aside from whatever HP is giving them directly as incentive to stick around).
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Are you sure? If given $230 millions what would you do and which AI product would you build, to generate $115 millions?
I would immediately shut down and return $114 million to the investors. I'm keeping that extra $1 million as a tip for prompt service.
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You’re kidding, right? In no way did Humane generate $115 million; they lost over $100 million. The list of ways not to do that is infinite.
Start with: an AI which emits a binary yes/no to, “Should I invest some of this $230 million such that it becomes $115 million 5 years from now.”
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You meant to write "generate $-115 million" I think. I'd start by putting all the money under a mattress which is already doing way better than Humane. Then I'd try to think of something fun to make.
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> and which AI product would you build
Why would it need to be AI? VC investors care about making money, not how.
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You don’t need to generate $115M - just lose $115M and there you go
Bear in mind that some of these VCs likely preferentially invest only in dumb AI things, so won't be interested in your thing if it is too sensible.
Related Bloomberg story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43095699
The main thing I'm sad about is that presumably their lovely custom font (Humane VF) will disapear. I covert it
If it’s on the device can’t you crack it open and grab it from the SD card or whatever storage they use? Given that it’s going to be bricked anyway
“HP jumps the train in a detached wagon.”
That thing failed to explain what it does and how. As one reviewer said, “with this battery, I can spend a whole day”.
Can’t believe they managed to find someone to buy this nothing-burger for $100m+.
I don’t get it. Why did they not just sell this as a hardware device? The projector on it is cool. That alone starts competing with my Apple Watch.
These guys figured out an entire new category of hardware peripheral, and did what I understood to be some pretty cool engineering to make it work.
WHY do people push this closed off ecosystem stuff? Seriously I do not get it.
Because they were selling it below cost? They needed the service fees for the company to be viable.
So raise the cost until it's profitable and see who buys it.
Because it didn’t really work on the hardware or software side. And it cost $700 which puts it into competition with some very powerful devices
The notion of a class-action lawsuit was born for this day.
A perfect match :)
Has the huge seed round thing ever worked?
Mistral?
Feels like their only hope is to be quasi-nationalized as THE European ai play.
Maybe I missed something though.
Yeah, so ... no.
This product, it's build-up and it's eventual unveiling legitimately felt like the very best of satirical comedy.
“…$116 million…”
does spit-take
I can't imagine that Humane has anything worth $100 million. HP just likes lighting money on fire I guess.
this is a good reminder for all those developers that seem to think marketing is meaningless
It's not actually. The problem was not marketing. The problem was the product itself. No marketing could have helped them, as the product was so bad. The good reminder here, is to build something people actually want.
> The problem was the product itself.
Pretty sure the person means HP bought a joke of a company/product because of the marketing.
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What are you saying? That Humane didn't market their useless device better? Or that they had such great marketing they were able to land at HP?
the latter - the fact this product had any traction leading to this is a result of marketing almost entirely.
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Good Luck, HP trying to keep Humane afloat
well, now you KNOW ai is worthless.
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