As a part of its additional push into AI wearables and private assistants, Amazon is buying Bee, a San Francisco-based startup finest recognized for its $49.99 AI-powered wristband that listens to conversations and turns them into reminders, summaries, and to-do lists.
The deal, confirmed Tuesday by each firms, provides one other layer to Amazon’s rising curiosity in shopper AI {hardware}, Bloomberg reported. Bee’s machine might appear to be a easy Fitbit-style smartwatch, nevertheless it’s constructed to quietly course of spoken interactions within the background—serving to customers hold monitor of their day with out lifting a finger.
Bee CEO Maria de Lourdes Zollo introduced the acquisition in a LinkedIn put up, saying the startup was based on a imaginative and prescient of creating AI really feel private and supportive.
“After we began Bee, we imagined a world the place AI is actually private, the place your life is known and enhanced by expertise that learns with you,” Zollo wrote in a LinkedIn post. “What started as a dream with an unbelievable group and neighborhood now finds a brand new residence at Amazon.”
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the corporate’s plans to amass Bee however declined to share the deal phrases.
Amazon Is Shopping for the Wristband That Listens to Your Life: Acquires Bee AI to Reinvent Alexa on Your Arm
The acquisition provides to Amazon’s rising AI arsenal, which incorporates its Trainium chips, the Nova basis fashions, and a chatbot-driven purchasing assistant. It’s additionally been opening up its Bedrock platform for third-party builders. On the identical time, the corporate has been transforming Alexa—initially launched over a decade in the past—utilizing generative AI, because it tries to remain aggressive with platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Bee isn’t Amazon’s first transfer within the wearable area. The corporate beforehand launched a fitness-focused product line referred to as Halo, which it discontinued in 2023 throughout a broader price evaluate. However with Bee, Amazon is revisiting wearables by a brand new AI-first lens.
Different tech firms have additionally been experimenting with voice-driven or AI-powered units. There’s the Rabbit R1, a compact AI gadget powered by OpenAI’s mannequin, and Humane’s AI Pin, which was not too long ago acquired by HP. Meta, in the meantime, has seen rising curiosity in its Ray-Ban good glasses since their 2021 debut. And OpenAI itself made waves in Could after buying Jony Ive’s startup, io, for a reported $6.4 billion. The corporate is alleged to be creating a screen-free machine.
Amazon’s curiosity in Bee alerts that the race to place AI in your wrist—or in your pocket—is way from over. And whereas the wristband could also be small, the stakes in AI {hardware} are getting larger by the day.
🚀 Need Your Story Featured?
Get in entrance of 1000’s of founders, buyers, PE corporations, tech executives, choice makers, and tech readers by submitting your story to TechStartups.com.
