Humane's daily returns are outpacing sales
Humane's AI Pin, launched at $699, has seen more returns than sales, with significant negative reviews, leadership turnover, layoffs, and efforts for financial stability through acquisitions and investor negotiations.
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Humane's AI Pin, launched at $699, has faced significant challenges since its release in April. Internal sales data reveals that returns have outpaced sales, with over $1 million in returns against $9 million in sales. By June, only about 8,000 units remained with customers, a number that has since dropped to around 7,000. The product has received overwhelmingly negative reviews, leading to a high return rate, with 1,000 purchases canceled before shipping. The company is now in a precarious position, having raised over $200 million from notable investors but struggling to meet its initial goal of shipping 100,000 units in the first year. The AI Pin cannot be refurbished after a return due to a T-Mobile limitation, resulting in e-waste. Humane's leadership has seen significant turnover, including key engineering roles, and the company has laid off staff as part of cost-cutting measures. Despite these setbacks, Humane continues to release software updates to address user feedback and is exploring options for financial stability, including potential acquisition talks with HP and negotiations with investors for debt financing.
- Humane's AI Pin has more returns than sales since its launch.
- The company has faced significant negative reviews and operational challenges.
- Over $1 million worth of AI Pins have been returned, contributing to e-waste.
- Humane is experiencing high turnover in its leadership and has laid off employees.
- The company is seeking financial stability through potential acquisitions and investor negotiations.
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11 commentsAdding insult to injury.
How could anyone think that's good product design?
People should view founders as more similar to hedge fund managers, who get a cut of the money they manage. Its largely the same, raise 30m because you went to Harvard, you are bound to cash out a few million, regardless of your ability to leverage that money.
Reminds me of the PowerPoint/NASA paper, many many years ago. At some point you get external feedback, whether from gravity or real customers. The direction of gravity will not be changed, real customers aren't much more malleable. Sigh.
I had never heard of this at all, after learning about it I can't think of a single thing I'd use it for, and I am not a luddite with new gadgets - I love stuff that tries to do something never done before.
IMHO humane pin was dead on arrival, using a pin to interact with an AI sounds great on paper until we realize it’s awkward and slow in real life use
If I were less moral I might try to get funding for something like this myself...
My initial thought was about stock price appreciation diverging from fundamentals. Private company anyway.
I do not quite understand how these sort one off tech lifestyle products take off like they do. That pin just never looked like it would do what it promised.
Integrate with an LLM like OpenAI's digital Chatline you could license the guts as the brains to a talking parrot or a new kind of Big Mouth Talking Bass fish.
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