Humane’s AI Pin stops working next Friday leaving early adopters without a refund

The creators of AI Pin are selling their business to HP and discontinuing support for the AI assistant.

Less than a year after releasing the half-baked AI assistant AI Pin, which was heavily criticized by tech reviewers and users, its creator, Humane, is discontinuing the product and selling its business.

On Tuesday, the company announced that electronics maker HP is buying Humane for $116 million. HP will obtain the AI-powered platform Cosmos and intellectual property, while the remaining employees will become part of HP.

“Humane’s AI platform Cosmos will help us create an intelligent ecosystem across all HP devices from AI PCs to smart printers and connected conference rooms,” said Tuan Tran, President of Technology and Innovation at HP, in a statement.

The new owners aren’t interested in further developing the AI Pin, so the wearable will be discontinued. The AI assistant will stop functioning on February 28th at 12 p.m. PST.

“After this date, it will no longer connect to Humane’s servers, and Center access will be fully retired,” Humane said in a blog post.

This means no calls, texts, cloud interactions, or data usage will be possible.

Consumers who own Humane’s AI assistants are advised to sync their devices over WiFi and download any stored pictures, videos, and notes from their devices. Otherwise, their data will be permanently deleted.

Those who ordered a new device within 90 days of November 15th, 2024, can get a refund, while early adopters will be left with basically non-working devices.

It’s unclear how many AI Pins were sold. However, very few could have bought the device in the last 90 days after plenty of bad publicity.

Humane was founded in 2018 by ex-Apple designers Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri. The founders raised $230 million from OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, Microsoft, and other notable investors, generating a lot of hype in the tech community.

Yet, soon after the device was released, many tech reviewers pointed out software bugs and non-working features. YouTuber MKBHD, for example, called the $700 device the worst product he had ever reviewed.

In October, more than 10,000 AI Pin cases were recalled due to potential fire hazards posed by lithium-ion batteries.

This May, the creators of the AI Pin reportedly wanted to sell the company for 750-$1 billion.