In 2022, Rewind had just raised $10 million from a16z and was building a personal data logging service that promised to privately record your activity and let you search your own history. But that was before OpenAI launched ChatGPT.
Today, genetic AI can make what Rewind previously created—a searchable record of your activity—much more useful. It’s not that surprising, then, to see the startup pivoting to integrate AI more deeply into its product. The company rebranded as “Limitless” and now offers an AI-powered meeting suite and a hardware locket that can record your conversations.
Company co-founder Dan Siroker first published his idea a conversation recording locket last October and started accepting orders at $59. In January, it announced that the company had complete a plan and aims to ship the product in Q4 2024.
Siroker released the final design this week, along with news of the company’s pivot. The $99 locket was posted on X earlier this week. The company is accepting pre-orders and plans to ship the first batch in August. Siroker said the company plans to price initial pre-orders at $59. Earlier on Wednesday, he posted it the startup has already received more than 10,000 pre-orders for the product.
Product features and rotation
The Limitless pendant can easily be attached to your shirt like a wireless microphone or tied like a necklace with a string and record conversations. The main use case is recording and transcribing meetings, so you don’t need to take notes. The company claims the device is weatherproof, has a 100-hour battery life, and can be easily charged via a USB-C port.
The hardware also has a “consent feature”, which does not record the other person in the conversation unless they expressly agree to be recorded. It is not clear if this feature will be enabled by default.
While the company is a few months away from shipping the hardware product, it has already released an app — available online, Mac and Windows — to record meetings. The app uses system audio and a microphone for recording, so there’s no need for a bot to participate in these meetings.
The app has features we’ve seen in meeting tools like Otter, Zoom, TimeOS, and TLDV. Siroker told TechCrunch that the company aims to differentiate itself with tools like automated real-time notes and meeting newsletters that are automatically generated based on attendees and past meetings.
The app is free and comes with unlimited audio storage and 10 hours per month with AI features like transcription, summarization and notes. Unlimited AI features are $29 per month or $19 per month if paid annually.
Image Credits: Unlimited
Siroker said one of the major differentiators is the company’s new confidential cloud product that stores data in encrypted form. While Rewind was largely a local product, the new cloud functionality allows users to access data anywhere.
Siroker said the company asked Leviathan Security Group to conduct a third-party audit of its security measurement solution.
“Confidential Cloud may sound like an oxymoron, but it’s not. It is private by design. Unlike the traditional cloud, your employer, us as a software provider, and the government cannot decrypt your data without your permission, even if subpoenaed. Only you control the decryption of your data,” he told TechCrunch.
The road ahead
On its website, Rewind says it has raised more than $33 million in funding from backers including a16z, First Round Capital and NEA. The company said it had not used money from last year’s unusual Series A round — where it sought investors from video posting on X — so it doesn’t intend to raise new money.
The company said it will continue to support Rewind in its current state, but won’t actively add new features. That means the startup won’t ship the Windows app it promised to build last year.
“We have no plans to close or merge Rewind into Limitless. We plan to bring many of our users’ favorite Rewind features directly to Limitless,” said Siroker.
“Users can even use both products side by side and decide which they like better. We hope that over time, they will agree with us that the Limitless approach is better and that they will use it exclusively.”
The company said the hardware product will answer questions through an AI-powered bot based on meeting recordings, personal account logins and information on the web. It will also provide a platform for developers to build apps or experiences around the product.
But Limitless’ bigger vision is to create AI agents to do things for you. This seems to be the trend for startups working with AI. Hardware startups like Humane and Rabbit are trying to make devices with artificial intelligence tools that promise to be powerful enough to take on certain tasks for you.
Browsers like The Browser Company’s Arc and YC-backed SigmaOS also create agents to browse the web for you. However, there are a lot of unknowns, as the output from AI bots is still full of bugs, and it is sometimes difficult to get the AI to understand the context and intentions of your query. AI-powered agents doing some work for you sure sounds like a dream, but we might have to wait a while to get there.
