The promise of AI and large language models (LLMs) is the ability to understand increasingly wider amounts of context and make sense of that information easily, so it makes sense that we’re seeing a bunch of companies trying to make wearable hardware so that people can use AI in their day-to-day lives.
The latest entrant in this space is Bee AI, and it has raised $7 million in a round led by Exor to build out its wearable AI assistant that listens to you to learn more about you, take notes, surface contextual reminders and build lists. The company also has a companion Apple Watch app.
The amount being disclosed today includes pre-seed funding of $1.5 million that the startup had raised previously. Greycroft, New Wave VC, Banana Capital, and Brian Bedol (an investor and TV exec who previously founded a couple of sports networks) also participated in the new round.
The amount being disclosed today includes pre-seed funding of $1.5 million that the startup had raised previously. Greycroft, New Wave VC, Banana Capital, and Brian Bedol (an investor and TV exec who previously founded a couple of sports networks) also participated in the new round.
Co-founder and CEO Maria de Lourdes Zollo told TechCrunch that while the core focus of Bee AI is the software powering the assistant, the company built a wearable so the app doesn’t need to constantly take control of a user’s phone mic.
The device and app can be used to do various tasks as mentioned earlier, but the startup is ambitious. De Lourdes Zollo said the company wants to give each consumer a “cloud phone” — essentially a mirror of your phone with access to your accounts and notifications. At the moment, some of the features in early testing include the ability to read your notifications and get reminders about important messages and events, write emails or tweets, and get shopping suggestions on demand.
The device currently just has a mute button to stop recording, but the company is exploring ways to also use the button to trigger commands.
SOURCE:https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/29/former-squad-and-twitter-execs-raise-7m-to-build-a-hardware-ai-assistant/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANZ2pW5qr66xGFkRXCZXQkL6WoDTvy1N84hWigccJv3-ZNDQ6S7K-KvkYVAxfSi7HdYUPh2YdhXzwnTlAbOtCLveWooYT4Ms5EwJgchTVSqbHCRRPb4AUoamjAj9fbnpifE6O7cGvfQKhskbiw3qWpoMzNNkXYRbHvx6mkT7gt0u
