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AI Wearables 1.0- Was Humane’s AI Pin Too Ambitious?

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  • Duo’s Demise
    • Duolingo’s mascot, Duo, was killed off in a Cybertruck crash in a TikTok video posted by the CEO.
    • This marketing stunt is oddly successful, possibly due to negative sentiment towards Elon Musk. Transcript: Anthony Ha And I’m Anthony Ha, the Weekend Editor at TechCrunch. I also have a 1400-day streak in Duolingo, which I mentioned because Duolingo has been in the headlines recently because Duo, the mascot of Duolingo, has been killed by a cyber truck. This was actually posted. This isn’t like a user generated thing. This is something the CEO posted on TikTok as kind of a marketing stunt. And I mean, part of it, it just seems like this very absurdist thing where they like to play with Duo and just have weird things happen to the owl. But as Amanda, I think, pointed out in the story about it, this also just seems like a kind of a little way to kind of like nudge Elon Musk in as well to kind of be like, hey, if you’re not feeling Great about the state of things, this is one way to sort of manifest it. Kirsten and Max, have you guys been mourning Duo? Kirsten Korosec Yes, absolutely. But I think it’s important to note here that at first when I saw the headline of the story, because her headline was Duolingo killed its mascot with a cyber truck and it’s going weirdly Well. And I was like, oh no, why would this happen? And I see the tactic here is to bring it back to life, right? By actually participating in the app, which is pretty clever. Anthony Ha Right. It’s just another way that Duolingo has gamified its app. It’s just like to bring Duolingo back, you have to play Duolingo. It’s also like if you’re a superhero comic book fan like me, you know that any famous character who dies never stays dead for too long. True. Kirsten Korosec Also, I was thinking that it seems to be going, quote unquote, weirdly well, because people are like showing their rebellion against Elon Musk, I guess, by putting their attention Into this language app. Anthony Ha Yeah, it’s hard to say, right? Like how much it’s that, how much it’s this is very bizarre, fun thing. Certainly there are other more in-world live things where people are manifesting, you know, displaying their dissatisfaction with the tactics of Elon Musk and Doge, which we’ll Get to later in the show. But I imagine that certainly if you are not feeling great about it, again, this is like one way to kind of like be like, yeah, grr, Cybertrucks. (Time 0:00:33)
  • Uber vs. DoorDash
    • Uber sued DoorDash, alleging anti-competitive tactics by leveraging first-party deliveries.
    • DoorDash allegedly uses its market dominance to pressure restaurants into exclusive partnerships. Transcript: Kirsten Korosec Yeah, grr, Cybertrucks. On that note, let’s get into the show today. We are going to tackle Uber versus DoorDash and the end of Humane’s AI pin. And then we’re going to get into the people in Elon Musk’s Doge universe and the next entrance in the AI lab race. I’ve got the first one, which I don’t know if either one of you have followed it much, but I’ve been covering Uber forever. And Uber has now sued DoorDash, alleging anti-competitive tactics. First of all, important question. Are you guys big users of DoorDash or Uber Eats? Max Zeff Yes, I am. But I had honestly no idea about the kind of first party delivery services that this whole lawsuit is really about. And I think that’s a really interesting thing, Kirsten, if you could kind of take us through like what that is and when that came about. Kirsten Korosec So first, I’m going to get into the allegations of the suit. So basically, what’s happening here is that Uber is claiming that DoorDash handles its first party deliveries for more than 90% of the largest enterprise restaurants. And it’s using this as leverage to essentially bully restaurants into only using DoorDash as opposed to allowing Uber Eats to compete. I kind of found it a little bit, I don’t know, ironic, I guess, because Uber is also known for interesting tactics in the ride-hailing world. At the root of it, though, is the proprietor, the restaurant owner, people who are often reliant on these first-party delivery apps to get business. So my understanding of it, and Max, as a user, please correct me if I’m wrong, but restaurant X exists, a donut shop or whatever. And instead of building out its own delivery service, it can rely on this other service to have basically their menu listed. With DoorDash delivery drivers, it’s hosted on the DoorDash app. And it saves them the expense of employing delivery drivers. And also it handles a lot of the networking and sort of the display of the menu and things like that. Am I getting that right? Max Zeff Yeah, that seems about right. And I think that the kind of interesting thing here is that, you know, Uber is alleging that DoorDash is the dominant player in the food delivery space, both in just its third party food Delivery app is the largest in the world, but also this first party space. Competitive in a space that it’s just trying to dominate as well. When Uber is clearly just like such a dominant force in the taxi and ride sharing universe. I mean, I mean, it seems crazy to me to, you know, allege that, you know, one of its competitors is being anti-competitive when it’s done so much of this itself over the years. I don’t know, Anthony, you’ve covered them a lot. Yeah. Anthony Ha I mean, I agree that from like sort of like a PR and optics perspective, it is pretty funny. I’m less confident about sort of say the legality of what is illegal, anti-competitive behavior or not. I think the other thing this really made me think of is that as a New Yorker, I mean, I think these conversations were happening outside New York too, but particularly in New York during The first year or two of the pandemic. And the only way we could, you know, support the restaurants in our neighborhood was by ordering from them. And then the restaurants started posting their DoorDash receipts and seamless receipts. And so it wasn’t just about DoorDash. It was about the sort of delivery ecosystem in general and how so much of the money that we were spending, that the diners were spending on these deliveries were going to the delivery Companies rather than to the restaurants themselves. And so I think beyond the specifics of the allegations against DoorDash, there has been this general sense that this delivery business is not necessarily sustainable for a lot of restaurants. Kirsten Korosec Absolutely. And I do think that this lawsuit I’d be paying a lot more attention to if this were, let’s say, a class action lawsuit filed by restaurant owners. And I’m kind of wondering if we’re going to see some sort of activity like that. Of course, Uber filing the lawsuit has given it a lot of attention. You point out is a lot of these restaurants thought that they would find this great service that would reduce costs for them, but they’re really not getting the profits or the revenue That they thought. (Time 0:02:37)
  • Humane’s Failure
    • Humane, an AI wearable startup, shut down and sold assets to HP for $116 million, less than half of its fundraising.
    • The AI Pin, marketed as a smartphone replacement, received negative reviews and low sales. Transcript: Kirsten Korosec We have to move on. And I really want to get to Humane and its AI pin, Rip Humane. Max, please catch us up. Yes. Max Zeff So one of the buzziest AI hardware startups, Humane, last year they launched their AI pin, which is a wearable device that you can talk to with AI. They marketed it as a replacement for your smartphone or your computer. Kind of the, it’s a bunch of Apple execs created the company to create the next kind of iPhone moment for hardware. But that didn’t work out. The Humane AI pin is now dead. And HP acquired some of the startup’s assets for $116 million. And the Humane AI pin was not one of those assets. So a lot of the operating systems and technical talent that Humane was housing in its startup will move over to HP, the AI pin will not. It’s dead. Kirsten Korosec Yeah, I have a quick question. So first of all, should this be considered an acquihire? So are they actually getting real IP here? And what happened to all these people? Like, I think you just had a scoop about all these layoffs that happened. Yes. Max Zeff So it’s kind of an acquihire. So they are bringing over a lot of the talent. I just talked to some sources at Humane. We just published a story on Thursday. This will come out on Friday. But basically, some Humane employees got really big salary increases to go work at HP and this new HP IQ unit. It’s kind of a new AI within HP to inject AI capabilities into personal computers and printers. And you might say, wow, that sounds a lot less exciting than creating the next iPhone. And I would say you’re right. But these employees are getting way higher salaries, which makes sense because it’s not a startup. So they don’t have the same risk reward ratio. But a lot of the company’s employees got laid off too in this process, which wasn’t publicized as much in the announcement, but it’s a reality of acquisitions. The same day the acquisition was announced, a lot of employees got cut off from their corporate Google and Slack channels. And yeah, this was just a super chaotic day for Humane. And kind of a fitting end for this like really crazy, troubled startup. The reviews of the AI pin, you guys probably remember, they were terrible when they first came out. Anthony, I mean, what do you have to say about just like the journey of this company? Anthony Ha Well, I mean, you know, just first of all, it’s always a bummer when you have to read about, not when you have to read about, but just the fact that often these kinds of acquisitions can Go so badly for a lot of the employees. But I guess thinking about the ecosystem more broadly, I was just remembering, like you were saying, how brutal those initial reviews were. And I mean, it did seem, I haven’t tried it myself, but it seemed like pretty universally acknowledged that the pin was not a good product and did not live up to the hype. But there was also this promise of this idea of, hey, maybe there is an interface that comes after the iPhone that is sort of more voice or gesture oriented that’s based more on AI and chatbots. And I’m curious to what extent, you know, the fact that Humane ended so quickly and so badly is about Humane itself? Or is it also a referendum on this idea of being like, well, maybe people don’t really want that? Max Zeff Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting question. I think a lot of people were very quick to kind of jump to the conclusion that this means that AI wearables as a space is just completely wrong, like completely missed the mark, just a lot Of hype. I actually don’t think that’s true. I think that Humane, for all the things that got wrong, it was also kind of remarkable how many things that got right. Like it came up right at the time that ChatGPT was coming around and built this huge lab. And right as it’s dying, we’re kind of seeing a lot of other AI wearables really take off. Like the meta Ray-Bans are still selling really well and the company is preparing to release more. The Rabbit R1, which kind of came up at the same time, it just made its way into Best Buy stores, which is kind of a subtle but kind of remarkable thing to happen at this stage. So yeah, I don’t know. I think that they were maybe a little too early and didn’t execute well on a lot of things. But we’re seeing a lot of interest in this space now. So yeah, it’ll be interesting to see what happens broadly. Kirsten Korosec We’re going to see a lot of early entrance and early failures, some consolidations, some acquihires. And then I’m very interested what we see in the next wave of AI wearable startups or even large companies like, you know, a year or two from now, let’s see what HP has. And if they end up incorporating, you know, some of Humane’s tech, I think it had that Cosmos AI is like an operating system and it’s, you know, maybe it will be embedded in its future HP Products. So stay tuned on that. But it does feel very much like first wave AI wearables. Anthony Ha It’s also interesting to see the trajectory of the startup. I feel like when I see a startup raise that much money, I just sort of expect that, all right, they’ve got a lot of runway. They can kind of keep trying with this. And if, you know, V1 doesn’t work, there’s going to be a V2, a V3. I mean, I think partly because this is a hardware startup but I imagine also just because they probably just were burning a lot of cash. And so when you’ve got that much money going in and that many investors, there’s also just probably a sense where they all kind of looked at each other and were, I mean, not literally, But figuratively all kind of looked at each other and said, are we going to put more hundreds of millions of dollars into this? Is there a chance this turns around? Or if not, we’re just pulling the plug immediately and just seeing how quickly it kind of seemed to unravel. Yeah, (Time 0:07:10)
  • Musk’s Playbook
    • Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is staffed with individuals from his network of companies.
    • This reflects Musk’s playbook of leveraging talent across his various ventures. Transcript: Kirsten Korosec All right, we’re back. And I’m going to lead this one, but I’m ready for all of your questions. It’s a project that I participated in, and the headline speaks kind of for itself. It’s a little bit of the TLDR, the people in Elon Musk’s Doge universe. And I want to say that this has been a project that we’ve been working on a bunch of us on for a few weeks now. There has been some wonderful reporting. Wired stands out really as the paragon of reporting here in terms of identifying some of the workers, what’s been going on behind the scenes of Doge, otherwise known as the Department Of Government Efficiency. What we struck out to do was not just to identify, and we independently confirmed everyone who is working in Doge, but really to look at their connections with Elon Musk’s ecosystem Or universe, if you will, of companies and really show that link. And if anyone has any takeaway from it, it really should be, this is his playbook and how he operates many of his companies, which is he pulls talent in from, let’s say, Tesla to work on Something in Boring Company or SpaceX to work on something or a Neuralink. And this very much is reflective in how Doge has been built. And the other thing, and then I’m going to shut up and let you all comment and ask questions, is really this is a living document. So please stay tuned. We are going to be continuing to update this for forevermore, I have a feeling, even though Doge is supposed to only exist until July. Anthony Ha So, I mean, just a little behind the scenes is we have this list that I think we’re all in our prep document that we’re all looking at now. And, you know, the tech and treaters can see a version of that in the article. Is there like specific circles within the like Elon Musk universe that he’s drawing on particularly heavily? I mean, my sense from from this and from other things, for example, is that it tends to be sort of these like younger programmers who are often it seems like getting pulled in and putting In charge of these huge agencies. Kirsten Korosec Yes, there are all these young programmers who are being pulled in. You’ll notice that some of them, for instance, like participated in an XAI hackathon or interned at Neuralink, probably noticed there. But in the higher echelons of Elon Musk’s orbit, I guess, you have people like Steve Davis, really important person, longtime SpaceX employee, but then became president of the Boring Company. He is married to and has a child with Nicole Hollander, who was kind of an unofficial and kind of polarizing figure in the Twitter transition, now is actually considered an ex-employee. These people are really essential because they’re very well trusted in the inner circle, probably know a lot, and they are likely advising who is also brought in. We haven’t been able to confirm if Elon Musk specifically knew each one of these young people and tapped them, or if it was really, you know, more about the inner circle noticing these People. And so far, what we found is it seems to be a combination of the two. Max Zeff So one thing that strikes me when I read this story was just, I mean, how many people on this list are just very self-interested actors? I mean, obviously, Elon Musk has his hands in every kind of industry and tech right now. But Marc Andreessen, as well as listed as an aid on here. And then a lot of these people came from Elon’s other companies or other Silicon Valley giants. So I’m just curious, like, what to you is just like striking about the conflict of interest here, know, that’s playing out in all of this, because it seems like there’s just this kind Of very self-interested actors are being kind of gently pushed into the government. Maybe not gently, maybe very aggressively. I’m just curious how you’re viewing it. Kirsten Korosec So, I mean, hey, networking, man, you know, is it a conflict of interest or is it just being a networker? Yeah. So I would say that, first of all, the big glaring conflict of interest here is that you have someone who is, you know, on paper, at least the wealthiest individual in the world, essentially A right hand of President Trump. And they’ve gone out of their way to say he is not leading Doge, but is a unpaid advisor. And we have that in the story. But he also, one of his companies, SpaceX, has received more than $20 billion in federal contracts. And also Tesla has been certainly a company that has received a lot of incentives, although funny enough, there has been a lot of EV incentives that have been pulled back under separate Trump executive orders. So there is certainly a conflict with Elon’s companies. And then there’s just a huge mix of his network that goes really far back in history, even to his early PayPal days, of people now in DC. Anthony Ha And I mean, I think that also ties into another piece of Musk news that I wanted to at least mention briefly, which is that there’s this Bloomberg report that X is trying to raise money At a $44 billion valuation. And, you know, this is also happening at the same time that Tesla shares are up really substantially since Trump’s election. And I think, you know, other Musk companies seem to be doing well. But my sense is that generally speaking, this is not because Wall Street or investors are like, wow, the fundamentals of these businesses are so good. It’s because, oh, we think these are going to do well because Elon Musk is in charge now. Kirsten Korosec Yeah. I mean, I would say that that’s a very good evidence-based guess or speculation. I will say Tesla has a long history of being treated differently than other automakers by investors. Investors seem very much interested in future products that don’t yet exist with Tesla and are often rewarded for futuristic looks as opposed to, let’s say, their revenue missing It or beating expectations. This year was the first year that their sales went down year over year, but their stock went up largely because people paid most of the attention on autonomous vehicle technology and AI. And Elon Musk is very good at communicating the future product and convincing people that this is a real thing than probably any leader that I’ve ever come across. The other thing I want to mention before, I do really want to get into the AI lab race. And Max, I know you’re going to have a lot for us on that. But one thing I thought that was just a fun tidbit that we found in this story is that one of the Elon Musk staffers, Christopher Stanley, created a Doge AI assistant for making government Less dumb. I played around with this and I didn’t get quite the smart answers that I was looking for, including recently I asked if Doge still (Time 0:13:40)