Latest news with #AIwearables
Entrepreneur
23-07-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Amazon Acquires Bee, Startup Behind Eavesdropping Wearable
Bee's core product is a $50 wristband that resembles a Fitbit and listens to everything you say. Amazon is making a push into AI devices with a new acquisition. Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch on Tuesday that it is planning to acquire San Francisco-based Bee, an AI wearable startup, but noted that the deal has not yet closed. Bee employees have received offers to join Amazon, an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch. The startup has between two to 10 employees listed on LinkedIn. Bee's core product is an AI bracelet that acts as a second memory, recording all of the conversations it hears to create summaries, reminders, and to-do lists for users. The $50 device, which resembles a Fitbit smartwatch, requires an additional $19 monthly subscription. Bee raised $7 million last year to develop the gadget, which can understand 40 languages and has a 7-day battery life. It is currently backordered due to high demand. Related: Samsung Is Looking into Making AI Necklaces, Earrings, and Other Wearables: 'All Kinds of Possibilities' Bee CEO Maria de Lourdes Zollo wrote in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday that she "couldn't be more excited" about the acquisition. "What began as a dream with an incredible team and community now finds a new home at Amazon," Zollo wrote. The acquisition is a sign of Amazon's intent to create AI wearables, a different path from the company's Alexa-enabled Echo speakers and home assistant products. Amazon has tried to enter the wearable device market before, with limited success. In 2020, Amazon began selling a health-tracking bracelet called Halo, which tracked activity, sleep, and body fat. By 2023, Amazon shut down the Halo device as part of a broader cost-cutting measure. Other companies are also looking into AI wearables, including ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, which acquired the startup io for $6.5 billion in May to further its work on consumer devices embedded with AI. Samsung is also considering developing AI devices that users can wear, like AI necklaces and earrings, the company indicated earlier this month. Meanwhile, Apple and Google are working on smart glasses to compete with Meta, which released a new version of its bestselling smart glasses in collaboration with Oakley last month. Related: Amazon Is Ending an Important Privacy Feature for Alexa Echo Devices By the End of the Month Bee's wearable poses security, privacy, and legal concerns, given that it records everything around it. Eleven U.S. states, including Massachusetts, Florida, and California, require the consent of everyone involved in a conversation before the interaction can be recorded. Bee's current privacy policies state that the company does not save, store, or use audio recordings for AI training, but it does store what the AI learns about the user. The startup has stated that it only plans to record the voices of people who have consented verbally to the recording, per TechCrunch. Bee is also working on a feature to automatically stop recording audio based on boundaries like topic and location that the user defines, per the outlet. Amazon has previously come under scrutiny for the way it handles user data. In 2022, Amazon provided videos from Ring personal security cameras to law enforcement without a warrant or user consent. In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission ordered Ring to pay $5.8 million in a settlement over claims that Ring employees could view footage from customer cameras for years.
TechCrunch
22-07-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Amazon acquires Bee, the AI wearable that records everything you say
Amazon has acquired the AI wearables startup Bee, according to a LinkedIn post by Bee co-founder Maria de Loudres Zollo. Amazon confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch, but noted that the deal has not yet closed. Bee, which raised $7 million last year, makes both a standalone Fitbit-like bracelet (which retails for $49.99, plus a $19-per-month subscription) and an Apple Watch app. The product records everything it hears — unless the user manually mutes it — with the goal of listening to conversations to create reminders and to-do lists for the user. Zollo told TechCrunch last year that the company hopes to create a 'cloud phone,' or a mirror of your phone that gives the personal Bee device access to the user's accounts and notifications, making it possible to get reminders about events or send messages. 'We believe everyone should have access to a personal, ambient intelligence that feels less like a tool and more like a trusted companion. One that helps you reflect, remember, and move through the world more freely,' Bee claims on its website. Other companies like Rabbit and Humane AI have tried to make AI-enabled wearables like this, but have not found much success thus far. But at a $50 price point, Bee's devices are more cost-accessible to a curious consumer who doesn't want to make a big financial commitment. (The ill-fated Humane AI Pin was $499.) An Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch that Bee employees received offers to join Amazon. This acquisition signals Amazon's interest in developing wearable AI devices, a different avenue from its voice-controlled home assistant products like its line of Echo speakers. ChatGPT maker OpenAI is working on its own AI hardware, while Meta is integrating its AI into its smart glasses. Apple is rumored to be working on AI-powered smart glasses as well. These products come with a number of security and privacy risks, given that they record everything around them; different companies' policies will vary in terms of how voice recordings are processed, stored, and used for AI training. In its current privacy policies, Bee says that users can delete their data at any time, and that audio recordings are not saved, stored, or used for AI training. The app does store data that the AI learns about the user, however, which is how it can function as an assistant. Bee previously indicated that it planned to only record the voices of people who have verbally consented. Bee also says it's working on a feature to allow users to define boundaries — both based on topic and location — that will automatically pause the device's learning. The company also noted that it plans to build on-device AI processing, which generally poses less of a privacy risk than processing data in the cloud. It's not clear if these policies will change as Bee is integrated into Amazon, however — and Amazon has a mixed record on the handling of user data from its customers' devices. In the past, Amazon shared footage with law enforcement from people's personal Ring security cameras, with neither the owner's consent, nor a warrant. Ring also settled claims in 2023 brought by the Federal Trade Commission that employees and contractors had broad and unrestricted access to customers' videos.
