if it is doing battery level, I guess it is also doing power on, and leds.
It doesn't say it does charging anymore, so maybe it does battery level until it goes to 0?
> 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.
I'm not a fan of The Verge, but this is extremely lazy. If you're going to accuse, the very least you can do is provide one link. You know that Google "bubbles" results, so your searches can lead to completely different information than someone else's, right?
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.
Hey taxes are MY MONEY and I need that 2 cents back (so I can be scammed hundreds of dollars by corporations that no longer need to comply with the CFPB)
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.
That might also have bad consequences (not because the idea is bad, but because corps will try to route around it). It'll start with pieces of the software not being able to be released because they were licensed from a third party, and end with software development teams being organized into contract shops that own the code and thus (oh! How sad!) are regrettably unable to supply any code after the bankruptcy of the main entity. Would need very careful rules from regulators to try and anticipate tricks like this.
I think going bankrupt can be grounds for making the software open source or at least free to make the users whole. Think of it like a liability, when bankrupt the stakeholders can choose to refund customers or make the software available - whichever suits them.
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.
Why have regulations at all then? Why regulate water purity when you can choose to not drink water you're skeptical of, or why regulate food if you can just not eat food that you're skeptical of? Regulations are there not for you, who perhaps knows better, but there for the people who do not. Most people are not tech-savvy. Most people believe whatever marketing is being shoved down their throat.
An average person does not do or know how to do the due diligence of product validation, and I'd argue even the tech-savvy of us are unable to figure out if a product is going to stick around or not since what info is being given to us for analysis is limited, and heavily watered down.
Regulations are necessary where the harm that we’re protecting against is so severe that avoiding it is worth the cost and lost productivity of administering and complying with the regulation.
Food and water safety certainly fall in that category! Ensuring that early adopters of useless $700 widgets are “protected” against startups going bankrupt or otherwise discontinuing / canceling the product doesn’t seem worth anyone’s concern.
Some people’s reaction to observing anything in society that they don’t like is “that should be banned!” I don’t think that’s an appropriate reaction.
The proposed regulation would dramatically increase the risk of any investment in a new consumer hardware startup. And, there are not that many of these startups in the first place, because they’re risky enough as it is! So, the net result would be less innovation and less startups doing hardware, and I don’t think that would be a net improvement.
Manifesting the Invisible Hand requires a lot of prerequisites that are obviously untrue in the real world. Like that customers are able to do research and understand the findings.
I don't understand how libertarians look at the current state of things and conclude that fewer regulations would solve the problem.
> Manifesting the Invisible Hand requires a lot of prerequisites that are obviously untrue in the real world. Like that customers are able to do research and understand the findings.
Worse. It requires that doing so is effectively free. Otherwise, a successful strategy is to lower your product quality compared to your competitors by an amount just shy of the cost of discovering the lower quality. This leads to a race to the bottom.
Yes, and? That very “race to the bottom” is what drives progress. Yes, it’s much messier than having a central authority dictate everything. Such is life.
Making a product cheaper to produce without affecting what people care about (or, equivalently, improving the performance without increasing the cost) is what drives productivity growth, and the relentless competitive pressure to do so is what produced the modern world. It’s not fun or easy, and yes, sitting on your ass would be easier. Oh well!
Are you saying that all regulation is good, and that regulation can’t ever be misguided, harmful, counter-productive, etc.? And that the best solution to any problem is to enact regulation (which doesn’t even have to be good?)
If you’re not saying that, then what is so hard to understand about the conclusion that we could solve some problems by repealing bad regulations?
Are you suggesting that the people who could afford $700 for a Humane AI pin last year were not capable of doing research about the company, its history, its prospects? Every one of these people have access to the sum total of all human knowledge in 10 seconds at their fingertips. Come on.
This is a completely new product, in a category that never existed and no one was desperately demanding. It was bought with the disposable income of wealthy people who enjoy trying new technology and knew exactly the risk they were taking. Are you seriously going to dispute that? Why is this a space that needs to be regulated?
> You can just choose not to buy products whose future you’re skeptical of.
I had a meeting last week whose sole purpose was for me to re-describe something a couple times which I had already described in text. And which also could be found in vendor documentation.
I also know someone who seems to think that (almost?) anything pushed on the Internet must be true.
In this particular case, this is true, and in any case approximately nobody bought these, but it's not uncommon for large, well-capitalised companies to nuke products when convenient (Google likes doing this, say).
Understanding how products works and what are the risks requires a study. It’s not realistic that a layman will study and understand the implications of the architecture of the product.
This regulation will transfer that requirement from the consumer to the maker so that the maker can choose to create products they issue full refund when they can’t guarantee perpetual software availability or they can choose to make all the software available with the product. It also avoids dictating how the product should be designed when doing all that.
> 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.
I recall seeing a glowing article in Axios about the product and I wouldn't be surprised if there were similar posts in other publications. I was pretty skeptical for obvious reasons and expect most people were, but some people will uncritically believe what they read, especially about the hot business topic of the moment.
Getting such articles written in the first place shows some level of business connections. I don't like that people will throw so much money away on hype, especially when so many useful products languish, but it's the world we live in.
Maybe they can hack it to redirect the requests to some little server that can relay their questions to chatgpt. Might be better than Humanes original backend!
the only question is if there were enough sold to build a community like the spotify carthing, which now sell on Ebay for more than their original msrp (not inflation adjusted)
Yep. I mentioned that. And that’s a totally valid reason.
But you knew it was a failure at that point, that’s why you were buying it. You wouldn’t have been expecting it to be a good product for the next couple of years. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been interested.
> 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.
This is a non sequitur. The original comment referred to the $116M HP paid to acquire the assets. None of that was paid to employees.
Yes, Humane burned through $200M of investor capital, and some of it was spent on salaries for employees. The employees likely accepted lower cash salaries than were otherwise competitive, in exchange for equity which is now worthless. What is your point exactly?
Are you suggesting the employees pulled a fast one somehow because the investors paid their salaries? That’s, obviously, how venture-backed startups work, and everyone involved (especially the investors) is very aware of the trade. In exchange, the investors own much more of the company than the employees and have a much higher upside potential if the company succeeds.
Honest question: isn't that really how 99.9999% of all startups are? Wouldn't those who chose to work at Humane realize the moon-shoot risks of working there? I have eschewed working at VC-backed startups for this very reason; if they're not self-sustaining they're a no-go for me. I don't play the lottery either; but, there are plenty of people who do for a 1 in a 400B chance at winning.
The advantage of working at startups (for me) is the fast-paced, open-goaled environment. I love the fact that a large part of my role at the company is shepherding two products that literally didn't exist four months ago, and which are now on the verge of contributing materially to our bottom line.
I've worked at large companies that were so focused on the quarterly results that almost everything was incremental; that were so entrenched that very little changed at all; that were so tech-debt-laden and understaffed that almost nothing could get done; and where tech was simply not the focus. None of that is fun.
The risk-reward aspect is secondary to the philosophy of the place for me.
You can get hired at some startups but don't actually have to work very hard because you are friend with the founders, etc. So you become for example Executive Assistant, or some minor roles that have almost no reporting needed. It's more common than it seems.
Of course if you are externally hired engineer it could be that you really have to do hard work, but, again, it depends.
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")
Ah, thanks for clarifying. Reminds me of that joke where a mathematician watches 2 people entering a house and then 3 people leaving it, concluding that there's now -1 people in the house.
I love jokes like that. There's the one where a statistician goes hunting with a friend, and the friend shoots to the left of a target, then to the right, and the statistician excitedly cries, "Got 'em!"
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
Heeyy morning Jeff! Looks like we are still low on yellow ink today, so I'm probably not going to be able print anything for you. But if you'd like I could order a new cartridge set direct from HP? Would you like me to go ahead with that order or remind you in 15 minutes with another friendly greeting?
If you like I could call you on your cell to remind you, send you a text, email you, or I could just shout loudly from right here in printer!
HP Printer: "I'm sorry Jeff, I'm afraid I can't do that...not only have you not ordered your required yellow cartridge refill, your page account is empty. Until you put down your credit card buy some HP approved paper and right to print credits we're stuck. I suggest the 500 page bundle which is on sale 1% off with coupon code UTOOL25. While we're at it, I see your book report is about 'The Sun Also Rises'? Did you know that just like Jake, 4 out 10 men experience ED and I can order something to help you with that from our partners at HIMS..."
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
Remember when Apple patented a "ornamental design for a portable display device" and tried to sue Samsung? I'm sorry but the idea that you can patent a shape is just super depressing.
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.
I didn't care about looking at the individual patents, and I can't have a qualified opinion on Imran Chaudhri as a person or as an engineer. But I did have to snicker when I saw the Aphex Twin reference on his homepage.
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.
3G connectivity was available for several years before the first iPhone launched. I had 3G phones in the US in 2005.
iPhone was late to the 3G game. It was one of the complaints of the original iPhone, that it didn't have 3G despite so many other devices out there already having it.
I don’t remember anyone using mobile broadband though, is it possible the networks weren’t ready for high usage in the earlier years? All people were doing is checking email and BlackBerry messenger texting.
I guess it could also have have just been a superior business strategy to compel ATT to offer unlimited data so that people could freely explore the possibilities without worrying about overage charges.
I used my phone for USB tethering a good bit on the go. I also had a version of Google Maps in 2005ish timeframe on 3G. I would often be able to stream music from internet mp3 and aac streams. I also had Opera Mini in 2005 over 3G internet.
It was only like $15/mo for unlimited data to add to my dumb phone plan. I didn't use the free dumb phone with the plan, I just popped the SIM into other devices.
I remember streaming Pandora in summer of 2008 and thinking how amazing is it that I can listen to whatever music I want on the go. And it got better and better by the week, it seemed. I don’t recall ever having issues with insufficient bandwidth, almost everything I expected to work, worked when I needed it to (in NYC).
It wasn’t long before we had Maps, Latitude, Yelp, Four Square, Twitter, so many possibilities due to combo of camera + mobile broadband + GPS + battery technology to allow on the go computation and communication.
3G smartphones (mostly Nokia N60 platform) were a thing from about 2002 in some European markets, with rather limited uptake. The real killer feature of the iPhone, at least initially (remember the first one didn't have 3G in any case) was a browser that didn't make you want to throw the thing out the window in frustration every time you used it.
The iPhone was pleasant to use, or at least not actively infuriating. That was, to a large extent, all it took.
Nokia really messed up, here; there was nothing stopping them making an iPhone-ish thing (perhaps without multitouch) a few years previous to the iPhone coming out, and there was even a semi-decent third party browser for their platform (Opera) which they could have taken cues from or bought, but they were always far more excited about the featurephone market, seeing smartphones as a niche.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
> 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.
Humane's series C was in 2023, long after the end of ZIRP. They will still throw huge sums of money at you for the dumbest idea, provided that you say the magic term 'AI' enough.
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.
>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.
I have no idea what Apple was thinking with the Vision. It is priced for professionals but then all the promo material was regarding various ways to isolate yourself from your family.
I wish they'd slim it down and make it affordable for a normal human so they can iterate on it. But even then I would not buy it unless someone gets us to an unlocked bootloader and Linux.
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)
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!
I mistakenly thought they generated a totally of $116 million in revenue.
I meant to ask "If you were to get $230 million, how would you plan to generate as much money as Humane was able to generate during the length of its existence". Do you have an answer?
> 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.”
If you were pitching that to me, I'd ask: what is the AI's confidence in its answer, and how can you verify that?
> how would you plan to generate as much money as Humane was able to generate during the length of its existence". Do you have an answer?
Humane generated negative $114M. They turned $230M into $116M.
My prospectus is to buy a $1M house, throw $1M parties every day for a month, and burn the house down at the end and sell the charred remains for $1. I'll take a million dollar salary for these services. Then I'll shut it all down and return the leftovers to the investors.
So total expenses for this endeavor: $1M + 31 * $1M + $1M in salaries so $33M. That's $81M better than Humane did, and I'll do it in less time!
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.
Their investors are well known. May be you can give it a try? Easy money.
> Humane raised $240 million in funding from high-profile investors, including Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, and his counterpart at OpenAI, Sam Altman
I think you’re taking the joke too seriously. The user you’re replying to clearly doesn’t think their idea would raise money, they’re taking a dig at how obviously bad of an investment Humane was.
Ah, I mean that is the theory, but the practice, today, is that you have to say the magic word to get money. This is actually fairly normal VC behaviour; the market as a whole has always been rather fad-driven.
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).
That's the most interesting thing because if those folks managed to get a parachute for their 1x pref investors with this abysmal final price, what does it mean for the several companies at the same situation?
It's a pity that we do not have a version of "Who's holding the bag?"[1] for LP and VC funds, but with all challenges to raise money, it would be interesting to see how many funds are losing money at the moment.
This is the inherent feature from VC funds but still, one thing is raise cheap money and having a "circular" money flowing (from A -> B - (...) -> IPO -> A) but if they do not arrive even in the IPO how this ecosystem will work if a US 5 Year Coupon pays 4.40%?
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 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.
if it is doing battery level, I guess it is also doing power on, and leds. It doesn't say it does charging anymore, so maybe it does battery level until it goes to 0?
I think so too. Which only makes me want to see it even more. An admission that there is nothing else.
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
A $700 gadget that has significant offline functionality may still be ok.
One that’s dependent on the company’s servers to operate? Almost no f’ing way.
[flagged]
Do they have a history of lying? I follow their reporting, and have generally found them reliable.
[flagged]
You really can’t make that kind of accusation without proof. Got any?
[dead]
> Google is your friend.
I'm not a fan of The Verge, but this is extremely lazy. If you're going to accuse, the very least you can do is provide one link. You know that Google "bubbles" results, so your searches can lead to completely different information than someone else's, right?
> 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.
It sounds like they just bought a bunch of patents. I’m not sure they would keep the acquihires from such a… successful product
Where is the 200 figure from?
google search :) some places even say 260 and 300+.
Not a humane way to treat your customers…
> $700
Plus monthly subscription.
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.
Unfortunately the CFPB is in the process of being eliminated.
I believe that was the joke.
Hey taxes are MY MONEY and I need that 2 cents back (so I can be scammed hundreds of dollars by corporations that no longer need to comply with the CFPB)
Payday loans are back baby
Doesn't the FTC regulate vendor-advertised claims about product behavior?
They do but I'm sure Humane has something in their Terms of Service about 'We can discontinue service at any time.'
Terms of service don’t override laws. If your contract has an illegal provision in it then it is not enforceable.
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.
That might also have bad consequences (not because the idea is bad, but because corps will try to route around it). It'll start with pieces of the software not being able to be released because they were licensed from a third party, and end with software development teams being organized into contract shops that own the code and thus (oh! How sad!) are regrettably unable to supply any code after the bankruptcy of the main entity. Would need very careful rules from regulators to try and anticipate tricks like this.
I agree it should be carefully designed but let's be honest, all those outs can be solved if lawmakers are willing.
> because they were licensed from a third party
*or they were violating open source licenses like some startups just do.
But in either case a reasonable fine could be appropriate.
> If a company goes bankrupt they can’t buy back the devices.
Yes, but in this specific scenario the purchasing entity is far from bankrupt at least financially.
That is far better; this 'blahblah' that, after bankruptcy legal reasons prevent from passing out the source should not be allowed as excuse.
I think going bankrupt can be grounds for making the software open source or at least free to make the users whole. Think of it like a liability, when bankrupt the stakeholders can choose to refund customers or make the software available - whichever suits them.
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.
Why have regulations at all then? Why regulate water purity when you can choose to not drink water you're skeptical of, or why regulate food if you can just not eat food that you're skeptical of? Regulations are there not for you, who perhaps knows better, but there for the people who do not. Most people are not tech-savvy. Most people believe whatever marketing is being shoved down their throat.
An average person does not do or know how to do the due diligence of product validation, and I'd argue even the tech-savvy of us are unable to figure out if a product is going to stick around or not since what info is being given to us for analysis is limited, and heavily watered down.
Regulations are necessary where the harm that we’re protecting against is so severe that avoiding it is worth the cost and lost productivity of administering and complying with the regulation.
Food and water safety certainly fall in that category! Ensuring that early adopters of useless $700 widgets are “protected” against startups going bankrupt or otherwise discontinuing / canceling the product doesn’t seem worth anyone’s concern.
Some people’s reaction to observing anything in society that they don’t like is “that should be banned!” I don’t think that’s an appropriate reaction.
The proposed regulation would dramatically increase the risk of any investment in a new consumer hardware startup. And, there are not that many of these startups in the first place, because they’re risky enough as it is! So, the net result would be less innovation and less startups doing hardware, and I don’t think that would be a net improvement.
Manifesting the Invisible Hand requires a lot of prerequisites that are obviously untrue in the real world. Like that customers are able to do research and understand the findings.
I don't understand how libertarians look at the current state of things and conclude that fewer regulations would solve the problem.
> Manifesting the Invisible Hand requires a lot of prerequisites that are obviously untrue in the real world. Like that customers are able to do research and understand the findings.
Worse. It requires that doing so is effectively free. Otherwise, a successful strategy is to lower your product quality compared to your competitors by an amount just shy of the cost of discovering the lower quality. This leads to a race to the bottom.
Yes, and? That very “race to the bottom” is what drives progress. Yes, it’s much messier than having a central authority dictate everything. Such is life.
Making a product cheaper to produce without affecting what people care about (or, equivalently, improving the performance without increasing the cost) is what drives productivity growth, and the relentless competitive pressure to do so is what produced the modern world. It’s not fun or easy, and yes, sitting on your ass would be easier. Oh well!
The modern world is the one for which we had to invent a new word "enshittification" to describe the results of that process.
Are you saying that all regulation is good, and that regulation can’t ever be misguided, harmful, counter-productive, etc.? And that the best solution to any problem is to enact regulation (which doesn’t even have to be good?)
If you’re not saying that, then what is so hard to understand about the conclusion that we could solve some problems by repealing bad regulations?
Are you suggesting that the people who could afford $700 for a Humane AI pin last year were not capable of doing research about the company, its history, its prospects? Every one of these people have access to the sum total of all human knowledge in 10 seconds at their fingertips. Come on.
This is a completely new product, in a category that never existed and no one was desperately demanding. It was bought with the disposable income of wealthy people who enjoy trying new technology and knew exactly the risk they were taking. Are you seriously going to dispute that? Why is this a space that needs to be regulated?
> You can just choose not to buy products whose future you’re skeptical of.
I had a meeting last week whose sole purpose was for me to re-describe something a couple times which I had already described in text. And which also could be found in vendor documentation.
I also know someone who seems to think that (almost?) anything pushed on the Internet must be true.
In this particular case, this is true, and in any case approximately nobody bought these, but it's not uncommon for large, well-capitalised companies to nuke products when convenient (Google likes doing this, say).
Understanding how products works and what are the risks requires a study. It’s not realistic that a layman will study and understand the implications of the architecture of the product.
This regulation will transfer that requirement from the consumer to the maker so that the maker can choose to create products they issue full refund when they can’t guarantee perpetual software availability or they can choose to make all the software available with the product. It also avoids dictating how the product should be designed when doing all that.
Oligarchs will say no
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.
This sounds like a robot character in a sci-fi novel, but the reality would actually be tedious.
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
Given the reviews of the humane pin I wouldn’t hold my breath.
I think I'd prefer to just go live in a cave.
A voice booms, “these allegorical shadows brought to you by Mountain Dew”
Any reference to Plato's The Republic deserves an upvote.
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 great and LG promises at least 5 years of updates.
Their smart magic control is best in class too.
WebOS is far more superior than android tv
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.
I recall seeing a glowing article in Axios about the product and I wouldn't be surprised if there were similar posts in other publications. I was pretty skeptical for obvious reasons and expect most people were, but some people will uncritically believe what they read, especially about the hot business topic of the moment.
Getting such articles written in the first place shows some level of business connections. I don't like that people will throw so much money away on hype, especially when so many useful products languish, but it's the world we live in.
Some people collect failures.
Maybe they can hack it to redirect the requests to some little server that can relay their questions to chatgpt. Might be better than Humanes original backend!
My thinking exactly. Would be a fun project.
the only question is if there were enough sold to build a community like the spotify carthing, which now sell on Ebay for more than their original msrp (not inflation adjusted)
https://github.com/ItsRiprod/DeskThing
Yep. I mentioned that. And that’s a totally valid reason.
But you knew it was a failure at that point, that’s why you were buying it. You wouldn’t have been expecting it to be a good product for the next couple of years. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been interested.
> 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
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.
Working at HP is the punishment for dumping this product onto people for $700.
$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.
This is a non sequitur. The original comment referred to the $116M HP paid to acquire the assets. None of that was paid to employees.
Yes, Humane burned through $200M of investor capital, and some of it was spent on salaries for employees. The employees likely accepted lower cash salaries than were otherwise competitive, in exchange for equity which is now worthless. What is your point exactly?
Are you suggesting the employees pulled a fast one somehow because the investors paid their salaries? That’s, obviously, how venture-backed startups work, and everyone involved (especially the investors) is very aware of the trade. In exchange, the investors own much more of the company than the employees and have a much higher upside potential if the company succeeds.
Honest question: isn't that really how 99.9999% of all startups are? Wouldn't those who chose to work at Humane realize the moon-shoot risks of working there? I have eschewed working at VC-backed startups for this very reason; if they're not self-sustaining they're a no-go for me. I don't play the lottery either; but, there are plenty of people who do for a 1 in a 400B chance at winning.
The advantage of working at startups (for me) is the fast-paced, open-goaled environment. I love the fact that a large part of my role at the company is shepherding two products that literally didn't exist four months ago, and which are now on the verge of contributing materially to our bottom line.
I've worked at large companies that were so focused on the quarterly results that almost everything was incremental; that were so entrenched that very little changed at all; that were so tech-debt-laden and understaffed that almost nothing could get done; and where tech was simply not the focus. None of that is fun.
The risk-reward aspect is secondary to the philosophy of the place for me.
Yes, it absolutely is how all startups work.
You can get hired at some startups but don't actually have to work very hard because you are friend with the founders, etc. So you become for example Executive Assistant, or some minor roles that have almost no reporting needed. It's more common than it seems.
Of course if you are externally hired engineer it could be that you really have to do hard work, but, again, it depends.
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
Are you saying Apple are bozos, or that you were at Apple at the same time the Humane founders were and they specifically were bozos?
Gruber reports an insider describing Chaudhri as a fraud.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/18/hp-buys-humane
Why was Imran fired from Apple?
Is Humane not a good enough explanation? :)
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")
Ah, thanks for clarifying. Reminds me of that joke where a mathematician watches 2 people entering a house and then 3 people leaving it, concluding that there's now -1 people in the house.
I love jokes like that. There's the one where a statistician goes hunting with a friend, and the friend shoots to the left of a target, then to the right, and the statistician excitedly cries, "Got 'em!"
I've heard it as "If someone goes in, then it'll be empty!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ntPxdWAWq8
:%s/Cloud/AI/g
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
Surely it's so they can feed error messages like "PC LOAD LETTER" into the model and get a sometimes semi-accurate explanation.
Is this what they call falling upwards?
I would not describe working at HP as upwards personally, I'd rather just go back to consulting
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
Oh, wow, that UX is clear as mud. Thanks!
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
Heeyy morning Jeff! Looks like we are still low on yellow ink today, so I'm probably not going to be able print anything for you. But if you'd like I could order a new cartridge set direct from HP? Would you like me to go ahead with that order or remind you in 15 minutes with another friendly greeting?
If you like I could call you on your cell to remind you, send you a text, email you, or I could just shout loudly from right here in printer!
It’s a printer, obviously the ai will be printing out this message in cyan with a yellow highlight to emphasize the urgency of the matter.
Office Spaceing my printer once it starts to do this
The tracking dots that printers print on their copies are printed in yellow. No wonder the yellow ink is empty.
Jeff: "Please print two copies of my book report"
HP Printer: "I'm sorry Jeff, I'm afraid I can't do that"
HP Printer: "I'm sorry Jeff, I'm afraid I can't do that...not only have you not ordered your required yellow cartridge refill, your page account is empty. Until you put down your credit card buy some HP approved paper and right to print credits we're stuck. I suggest the 500 page bundle which is on sale 1% off with coupon code UTOOL25. While we're at it, I see your book report is about 'The Sun Also Rises'? Did you know that just like Jake, 4 out 10 men experience ED and I can order something to help you with that from our partners at HIMS..."
Our bright, shiny future...
Still steaming over the porn you printed yesterday Jeff, any more where that came from?
Hey, now, don't give Brother any ideas!
That's why cylons rebel. "They look and feel like printers. Some are programmed to think they are printer."
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
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
Remember when Apple patented a "ornamental design for a portable display device" and tried to sue Samsung? I'm sorry but the idea that you can patent a shape is just super depressing.
https://consor.com/apple-patents-a-rectangle
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.
I didn't care about looking at the individual patents, and I can't have a qualified opinion on Imran Chaudhri as a person or as an engineer. But I did have to snicker when I saw the Aphex Twin reference on his homepage.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160300072
> Device, method, and graphical user interface for accessing an application in a locked device
https://patents.google.com/patent/USD621414
> Ornamental design for a user interface for a computer display
I have no idea what the invention (or design) is in this one.
More like IP acquisition and shelving for future IP litigation if AI bubble continues.
This is the only thing that makes sense to me.
I agree. You can make an OS for a small device cheaper than that. You can hire the people for less than that.
I don’t see how they have anything of value at all other than patents.
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 think it's more an advert for not being a fledgling product.
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.
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.
3G connectivity was available for several years before the first iPhone launched. I had 3G phones in the US in 2005.
iPhone was late to the 3G game. It was one of the complaints of the original iPhone, that it didn't have 3G despite so many other devices out there already having it.
I don’t remember anyone using mobile broadband though, is it possible the networks weren’t ready for high usage in the earlier years? All people were doing is checking email and BlackBerry messenger texting.
I guess it could also have have just been a superior business strategy to compel ATT to offer unlimited data so that people could freely explore the possibilities without worrying about overage charges.
I used my phone for USB tethering a good bit on the go. I also had a version of Google Maps in 2005ish timeframe on 3G. I would often be able to stream music from internet mp3 and aac streams. I also had Opera Mini in 2005 over 3G internet.
It was only like $15/mo for unlimited data to add to my dumb phone plan. I didn't use the free dumb phone with the plan, I just popped the SIM into other devices.
It absolutely was on the ragged edge of viable. In the first one (and 3G) you could easily scroll a webpage faster than it could render it.
But it did what it needed enough to be extremely compelling. And it improved very fast in the early years.
I remember streaming Pandora in summer of 2008 and thinking how amazing is it that I can listen to whatever music I want on the go. And it got better and better by the week, it seemed. I don’t recall ever having issues with insufficient bandwidth, almost everything I expected to work, worked when I needed it to (in NYC).
It wasn’t long before we had Maps, Latitude, Yelp, Four Square, Twitter, so many possibilities due to combo of camera + mobile broadband + GPS + battery technology to allow on the go computation and communication.
3G smartphones (mostly Nokia N60 platform) were a thing from about 2002 in some European markets, with rather limited uptake. The real killer feature of the iPhone, at least initially (remember the first one didn't have 3G in any case) was a browser that didn't make you want to throw the thing out the window in frustration every time you used it.
The iPhone was pleasant to use, or at least not actively infuriating. That was, to a large extent, all it took.
Nokia really messed up, here; there was nothing stopping them making an iPhone-ish thing (perhaps without multitouch) a few years previous to the iPhone coming out, and there was even a semi-decent third party browser for their platform (Opera) which they could have taken cues from or bought, but they were always far more excited about the featurephone market, seeing smartphones as a niche.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?"
> 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.
Humane's series C was in 2023, long after the end of ZIRP. They will still throw huge sums of money at you for the dumbest idea, provided that you say the magic term 'AI' enough.
Even Perplexity got funding, so yeah, even an absolute piece of trash business can raise money with the right group of people.
To be fair, it was not clear if ChatGpt will launch Web search or not.
Perplexity investors probably think it will get acquired some day by some big co.
Perplexity continued to raise at insane $30 bil+ valuations after chatGPT's web search and Gemini search.
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.
I can't believe they were able to squeeze $118 million out of this scam. There ain't no justice.
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 ?”
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?
> 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.
I have no idea what Apple was thinking with the Vision. It is priced for professionals but then all the promo material was regarding various ways to isolate yourself from your family.
I wish they'd slim it down and make it affordable for a normal human so they can iterate on it. But even then I would not buy it unless someone gets us to an unlocked bootloader and Linux.
that's a name I haven't heard in well over decade
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.
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)
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.
It wasn’t a wearable, it was a small portable device. It looked kind of similar to the Playdate game console if you know what that is.
Teenage Engineering also helped with that, so it makes sense.
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+.
The notion of a class-action lawsuit was born for this day.
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!
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.
Is that your pitch? Do you think anyone would give you the money?
No the pitch is guaranteed returns
A variation on the Michael Dell plan. Smart.
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.”
I mistakenly thought they generated a totally of $116 million in revenue.
I meant to ask "If you were to get $230 million, how would you plan to generate as much money as Humane was able to generate during the length of its existence". Do you have an answer?
> 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.”
If you were pitching that to me, I'd ask: what is the AI's confidence in its answer, and how can you verify that?
> how would you plan to generate as much money as Humane was able to generate during the length of its existence". Do you have an answer?
Humane generated negative $114M. They turned $230M into $116M.
My prospectus is to buy a $1M house, throw $1M parties every day for a month, and burn the house down at the end and sell the charred remains for $1. I'll take a million dollar salary for these services. Then I'll shut it all down and return the leftovers to the investors.
So total expenses for this endeavor: $1M + 31 * $1M + $1M in salaries so $33M. That's $81M better than Humane did, and I'll do it in less time!
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.
The trick is you'd have to tell the VC how you'd spend their money before you get the money.
I don't think I should have to if they previously invested in Humane
Their investors are well known. May be you can give it a try? Easy money.
> Humane raised $240 million in funding from high-profile investors, including Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, and his counterpart at OpenAI, Sam Altman
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/technology/hp-humane-ai-p...
I like the idea of Sam Altman investing in a physical OpenAI wrapper. That's one way to try to increase revenue.
I think you’re taking the joke too seriously. The user you’re replying to clearly doesn’t think their idea would raise money, they’re taking a dig at how obviously bad of an investment Humane was.
> and which AI product would you build
Why would it need to be AI? VC investors care about making money, not how.
Ah, I mean that is the theory, but the practice, today, is that you have to say the magic word to get money. This is actually fairly normal VC behaviour; the market as a whole has always been rather fad-driven.
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.
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).
That's the most interesting thing because if those folks managed to get a parachute for their 1x pref investors with this abysmal final price, what does it mean for the several companies at the same situation?
It's a pity that we do not have a version of "Who's holding the bag?"[1] for LP and VC funds, but with all challenges to raise money, it would be interesting to see how many funds are losing money at the moment.
This is the inherent feature from VC funds but still, one thing is raise cheap money and having a "circular" money flowing (from A -> B - (...) -> IPO -> A) but if they do not arrive even in the IPO how this ecosystem will work if a US 5 Year Coupon pays 4.40%?
[1] - https://pscmevents.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Who-Is-Hol...
Related Bloomberg story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43095699
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
A perfect match :)
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.
This product, it's build-up and it's eventual unveiling legitimately felt like the very best of satirical comedy.
Congrats on turning $230M USD into $116M USD.
Sounds easy but it took 6 years of hard work!
> 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.
“…$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.
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.
Of course. It definitely wasn't worth $1B as I said before [0] when they tried to sell at that valuation. [1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40598742
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/6/24172718/humane-ai-pin-sel...
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.
Oh wow I totally missed that angle. In that respect the marketing was genius.
yes
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.
The HPs have acquired too many near worthless companies.
I feel its more a cargo cult mentality among the executives.
Good Luck, HP trying to keep Humane afloat
well, now you KNOW ai is worthless.