{"id":1048,"date":"2025-12-06T10:05:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T10:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=1048"},"modified":"2025-12-06T10:05:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T10:05:21","slug":"meta-acquires-ai-device-startup-limitless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=1048","title":{"rendered":"Meta acquires AI device startup Limitless"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Limitless, the AI startup formerly known as Rewind, has been acquired by Meta, the company announced Friday on its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.limitless.ai\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">website<\/a>. The company, which made an AI-powered pendant to record your conversations, says it will no longer sell its hardware devices and will maintain support for its existing customers for a year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Customers will no longer have to pay a subscription fee and will be moved to the Unlimited Plan for the time being. Other functionality will be wound down, including its non-pendant software \u201cRewind,\u201d which recorded users\u2019<a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2022\/11\/01\/rewind-wants-to-revamp-how-you-remember-with-millions-from-a16z\/\"> desktop activity<\/a> and turned it into a searchable record.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The startup, founded by <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/brettbejcek\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Brett Bejcek<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dsiroker?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Dan Siroker,<\/a>\u00a0the co-founder and former chief executive of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.optimizely.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Optimizely<\/a>, pivoted to become an AI device maker last year, offering its Limitless pendant for $99. The wearable could attach to your shirt like a wireless mic or be worn like a necklace. The device is one of several AI hardware devices on the market, including another (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/11\/03\/magazine\/friend-wearable-ai-companion.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">not very well-received<\/a>) AI pendant known as <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/01\/20\/friend-delays-shipments-of-its-ai-companion-pendant\/\">Friend<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to Limitless\u2019 announcement, the company shares in Meta\u2019s vision to \u201cbring personal superintelligence to everyone,\u201d which includes building AI-enabled wearables. (Meta is focused for now on AR\/AI glasses, like its Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta, and its in-lens AI glasses, the Meta Ray-Ban Display.) Limitless said it will help bring that vision to life \u2014 which likely means supporting Meta\u2019s existing products, not helping Meta add an AI pendant to its lineup. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The company hinted that the increased competition in the market made it difficult for it to compete, especially as the <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/11\/24\/altman-describes-openais-forthcoming-ai-device-as-more-peaceful-and-calm-than-the-iphone\/\">larger players like OpenAI<\/a> and Meta are developing their own <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/05\/21\/jony-ive-to-lead-openais-design-work-following-6-5b-acquisition-of-his-company\/\">hardware<\/a> devices, too. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen we started Limitless five years ago, the world was very different,\u201d wrote Siroker in the announcement. \u201cAI was a pipe dream to many. Hardware startups were considered unfundable, and a business that did both AI and hardware would have been considered ludicrous. But today is different. The world has changed. We\u2019re no longer working on a weird fringe idea. We\u2019re building a future that now seems inevitable. We\u2019re not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meta shared the following statement with TechCrunch via email: \u201cWe\u2019re excited that Limitless will be joining Meta to help accelerate our work to build AI-enabled wearables.\u201d The tech giant didn\u2019t share further information about its plans, beyond noting that the team will work in the wearables organization of Reality Labs.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-techcrunch-inline-cta\">\n<div class=\"inline-cta__wrapper\">\n<p>Techcrunch event<\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-cta__content\">\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__location\">San Francisco<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__separator\">|<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__date\">October 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Limitless will offer its customers a way to <a href=\"https:\/\/help.limitless.ai\/en\/articles\/13004987-how-to-download-your-limitless-transcripts-and-account-info\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">export<\/a> their data, the company said, or users can choose to <a href=\"https:\/\/help.limitless.ai\/en\/articles\/13005203-how-to-delete-your-limitless-account-and-data\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">delete<\/a> their data from within the app.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The startup had <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/04\/17\/a16z-backed-rewind-pivots-to-build-ai-powered-pendant-to-record-your-conversations\/\">raised<\/a> more than $33 million in funding from investors, including a16z, First Round Capital, and NEA. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Limitless has been acquired by Meta\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uuGTJzl1OVU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Updated after publication with Meta\u2019s comment. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/12\/05\/meta-acquires-ai-device-startup-limitless\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Limitless, the AI startup form&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[249],"tags":[420,898,895,897,585,607,896],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}