In 2024 a new product category arrived with extraordinary fanfare: the standalone AI device, a gadget you would talk to instead of pulling out your phone. The Humane Ai Pin, a $699 wearable that clipped to your shirt and projected a laser display onto your palm, launched in April 2024 as the flagship of this wave, alongside the Rabbit R1 handheld. The promise was a post-smartphone future built around a conversational AI assistant.
The reality landed quickly and hard. Reviewers found the Ai Pin slow, hot, and unable to reliably do the things it was sold to do. Sales were weak. Less than a year after launch, the device was discontinued.
The end is documented in HP’s own newsroom. On February 18, 2025, HP announced it was acquiring Humane’s assets in a transaction it described as expected to “close at the end of this month.” HP took Humane’s “AI platform Cosmos,” its team, and “intellectual property with more than 300 patents and patent applications,” folding the staff into a new group called HP IQ. Notably, HP’s announcement is about the software platform and patents - the Ai Pin device itself is not the thing being carried forward. Humane told customers their pins would stop connecting to its servers shortly after.
The 2024 gadget wave is a compact lesson in the difference between a working AI model and a working AI product. The language models behind these devices were real and capable; the hardware, battery life, latency, and basic usefulness were not there. A demonstration that dazzles on stage is a long way from a device that survives daily life, and that distance is where the hype went.