Meta buys Limitless, maker of the $99 AI recording pendant

Meta has acquired Limitless, the startup previously known as Rewind. Limitless announced the deal on its website. Its main product was an AI pendant that records and transcribes the wearer's conversations. The device could clip onto a shirt like a wireless lavalier or be worn on a chain, and it sold for $99.

What happens to customers

With the acquisition, Limitless is ending hardware sales. The company has committed to the following for people who already own a pendant:

• support for existing devices will continue for one year;
• subscription fees are dropped, and current users are moved to the Unlimited plan for now;
• users can export their data or delete it from inside the app.

Other products are being shut down. That includes Rewind, the desktop software that recorded on-screen activity and turned it into a searchable archive.

Where the team is going

Meta says the Limitless team will join the wearables group inside Reality Labs. In a statement, the company said Limitless would help it speed up work on AI-enabled wearables. Meta gave no further details about its plans. Its current wearable range centres on glasses, including Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta and the Meta Ray-Ban Display with an in-lens screen.

Limitless said it shares Meta's stated goal of bringing personal superintelligence to everyone. The startup also pointed to growing competition, with large companies such as OpenAI and Meta building their own AI hardware.

Background

Limitless was founded by Brett Bejcek and Dan Siroker, who previously co-founded Optimizely and served as its chief executive. The company turned into an AI device maker a year before the deal. In the announcement, Siroker wrote that a business combining AI and hardware would once have been seen as ludicrous. Before the sale, Limitless had raised more than $33 million from investors including a16z, First Round Capital and NEA.