Humane, the company behind the much-maligned AI Pin wearable device, appears to be having something of a fire sale, quite literally.
There are reports that the company is seeking a buyer at the same time it has warned owners of its gadget to “immediately” stop using the device’s charge case accessory, as it could pose a fire risk.
The warning came yesterday, as Humane said an internal investigation into the third-party vendor that supplied the battery cell in the charger determined the company “was no longer meeting our quality standards and that there is a potential that certain battery cells supplied by this vendor may pose a fire safety risk.”
While Humane says the risk is isolated, it has made the recommendation out of an abundance of caution. The company did not indicate that it would replace the charge-case accessories, but said it would give owners of the accessory two additional free months on their subscription.
News of the charging-case issue comes just shy of a month after the AI-powered wearable was released to scorching reviews, which used language like “not even close,” “the solution to none of technology’s problems,” and Gadget guru Marques Brownlee declaring the AI Pin “the worst product I’ve ever reviewed.”
That tsunami of skepticism didn’t deter the company, though, which reportedly began approaching potential buyers a week after the reviews hit, with an asking price of more than $1 billion, the New York Times reports.
HP was among the companies that cofounders Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri reportedly approached. Other potential buyers have since joined the conversations, but no deals have been struck, and it’s unclear if any talks have been serious to date. The company did not immediately respond to Fast Company’s request for comment.
Humane has reportedly brought the investment bank Tidal Partners on board to help with the potential sale and assist with a new funding round.
It’s a gutsy move for a company that has not yet had demonstrable success with its product—and one that brought out cynics online.
Humane, on paper, seemed to have a lot going for it initially. Bongiorno and Chaudhri, both former Apple employees, started Humane in 2019, hoping to create a wearable digital assistant that could do everything from take photos to search the web. Chaudhri was a designer at Apple for 19 years, best known for designing the app grid layout on the iPhone. Bongiorno was a director of software engineering for eight years, managing iOS, Mac OS, and the original iPad products.
The company quickly raised $240 million in funding with investors that included OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
The company projected sales of 100,000 units this year. As of early April, it had received just 10,000 orders. It has also lost some key employees and irked customers with the language of its return policy.
Humane, in April, implied that the AI Pin was not a finished product, but rather the start of an “ambient computing” era. The reaction from reviewers and users might raise questions about the staying power of that, but the more immediate question is whether potential buyers will see something in the company that makes them believers in the same future Bongiorno and Chaudhri are promising.
Should more significant problems come up as it explores a sale, it could be hard to convince them.