A month after launching its first product, Humane’s co-founders reportedly took their well-funded startup to market. While even the company’s biggest cheerleaders didn’t expect Ai Pin to change the world in such a short time, few of his many critics expected things to go so sideways, so quickly.
Humane’s biggest competitor, the Rabbit R1, didn’t fare much better. Shortly after launch, the hand-held AI device generator was slammed by critics. The biggest criticism of the half-baked device was that it could have been an app, instead of a $200 piece of hardware.
The pre-launch excitement of both devices is evidence that there is interest in a new form factor that leverages LLMs (large language models) in a way that is really useful in our everyday lives. For now, though, it’s safe to say that no one has stuck the landing yet.
Iyo represents a third form factor in the push to deliver autonomous AI production devices. Unlike Humane, which tried to introduce an entirely new form factor via a lapel, Iyo is integrating its technology into an already hugely successful category: the Bluetooth headset.
When the Iyo One launches this winter, the company will be able to build on several years of consumer education around integrating assistants like Alexa and Siri into the headset. The leap from this to more sophisticated LLM-based models is much smaller than one like the Ai Pin, which requires a fundamental rethinking of how we interact with our devices.
Like Humane and Rabbit, Iyo’s founding predates the current AI hype cycle. The company traces its history back to the previous era of 2019.
“I saw all these people I knew in AI, three different research organizations within Google, all the outside people, OpenAI and others making this incredible progress with these language models, all independently,” said founder and CEO consultant Jason Rugolo at TechCrunch. “I realize it’s algebra and data, and nobody has any corner on any of those things. I saw that fundamental models were going to proliferate and become a commodity — very controversial in 2019.”
While Humane was able to garner a fair bit of interest due to its founders’ time at Apple, Iyo was actually created within Google. The company was incubated inside Alphabet X’s “moonshot factory” that led to projects like Glass and Project Loon. Iyo spun off in 2021. Unlike X alumni Waymo, Wing and Intrinsic, however, the company does not operate as a subsidiary. Instead, Alphabet served as Iyo’s first investor. As Rugolo is quick to point out, the search giant does not hold a seat on the company’s board.
Another major plus is that contrary to its name, the One will not be Iyo’s first product. Right now, you can go to the company’s website and buy a different — but related — audio device. The $1,650 Vad Pro is essentially a sophisticated in-ear studio reference monitor. The device has a similar rounded shape to the One, along with head-tracking, but Iyo’s first commercially available device is wired.
“If you’re building on a digital audio workstation like Logic Pro,” says Rugolo, “it’s combined with a piece of software we wrote that implements our virtualization technology.” This is designed to help engineers create spatial sound mixes.
The Vad Pros speak to another important element of the Iyo One’s pitch: They are designed to be, above all else, a premium set of headphones. Unlike the Ai Pin and R1, which offer no value beyond their AI capabilities, the Iyo One can also simply function as a good pair of headphones.
The headphones are noticeably larger than standard Bluetooth headphones. This is due, in part, to the inclusion of a significantly larger battery, which Rugolo says can be charged for up to 16 hours when paired with a Bluetooth-enabled phone. If you use the One in cellular mode without a headset connected, on the other hand, that number shrinks significantly to about an hour and a half.
Cost is also a concern. While the Iyo One will cost a fraction of the Vad Pro, it’s still cheap at $599 for the Wi-Fi model and $699 for the cellular version. The latter puts it at the same price as the Ai Pin and hundreds of dollars more than the R1. This is way out of range for the average consumer to buy a piece of hardware just to mess around. Unlike Ai Pin, however, Iyo One will not require a monthly subscription.
“This kind of model is really something that comes from the venture,” Rugolo said. “They’re trying to drive companies hard to get people locked in. I don’t like this model. It’s not what’s best for customers.” However, the mobile version will require users to sign up for a plan with their carriers. This is just standard practice.
As Denon’s eventual acquisition of Nura showed, the Bluetooth headphone category is tough for a startup, no matter how new the underlying technology might be. The companies compete with the industry’s biggest names on the one hand, including Apple, Samsung and Google. On the other hand, you have pairs that are often designed by Chinese manufacturers that can be had for as little as $10 new.
Rugolo believes, however, that the headset will provide value from day one. Ai Pin and R1 struggled to say the same.
“I think the key is to deliver value right away, right out of the box, focusing on the features you’re going to have,” said Iyo’s founder. “We think this is a platform, and we think there’s going to be millions of what we call ‘Audio-First Apps,’ these AU apps. But people don’t buy platforms. They buy products that do extremely useful things for them. So just with the sound isolation, the comfort, the music quality alone, we think there’s a very big market for these devices.”
