Sad news for fans: The Ai Pin is going away as HP acquires Humane

Humane, the company responsible for the Ai Pin, has announced that it has been acquired by HP. In a new blog post released by the company, Humane said:

HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ) announced a definitive agreement to acquire key AI capabilities from Humane, including their AI-powered platform Cosmos, highly skilled technical talent, and intellectual property with more than 300 patents and patent applications. The acquisition advances HP’s transformation into a more experience-led company.

The company's main product, the Ai Pin, debuted last year, marking one of the first purpose-built hardware devices to utilize large language models under the hood.

The Ai Pin was controversial, however, due to hardware problems like its poor battery life and performance issues (aside from the typical hallucination we've come to expect from LLMs). Let's not forget the steep $700 price tag and an additional subscription fee. Barely a month after the Ai Pin shipped, it was reported that Humane was looking for a buyer for its business.

If you own an Ai Pin, you'll obviously be affected by this acquisition. Humane says that new purchases of the consumer Ai Pin have been discontinued.

Your Ai Pin will continue to work normally until 12 pm PST on February 28, 2025, when access to the Humane servers will be restricted, and all remaining customer data will be deleted. In addition to that, features like calling, messaging, AI queries/responses, and cloud access will no longer be functional.

If you have any important data (pictures, videos, notes) on Humane's platform, the company advises that you download them from the Center before February 28, 2025.

HP will be acquiring Humane for $116 million. Regarding this investment, here's what HP's President of Technology and Innovation, Tuan Tran, had to say:

This investment will rapidly accelerate our ability to develop a new generation of devices that seamlessly orchestrate AI requests both locally and in the cloud.

The engineers from Humane joining HP’s Technology and Innovation Organization will form a new group, HP IQ, which, according to Humane, is "focused on building an intelligent ecosystem across HP’s products and services for the future of work."