Humane pushes Ai Pin ship date to mid-April

techcrunch.com:

Hardware is difficult, to paraphrase a famous adage. First-generation products from new startups are notoriously so, regardless of how much money and excitement you’ve managed to drum up. Given all that, it’s likely few are too surprised that Humane’s upcoming Ai Pin has been pushed back a bit, from March to “mid-April,” per a new video from the Bay Area startup’s Head of Media, Sam Sheffer.

In the Sorkin-style walk and talk, he explains that the first units are set to, “start leaving the factory at the end of March.” If Humane keeps to that time frame, “priority access” customers will begin to receive the unit at some point in mid-April. The remaining preorders, meanwhile, should arrive “shortly after.”

— Sam Sheffer (@samsheffer) February 23, 2024

Humane captured a good deal of tech buzz well before its first product was announced, courtesy of its founders’ time at Apple and some appropriately enigmatic prelaunch videos. The Ai Pin was finally unveiled at an event in San Francisco back in early November, where we were able to spend a little controlled hands-on time with the wearable.

The device is the first prominent example of what’s likely to be a growing trend in the consumer hardware world, as more startups look to harness the white-hot world of generative AI for new form factors. Humane is positioning its product as the next step for a space that’s been stuck on the smartphone form factor for more than a decade.

Image Credits: Humane

Of course, this will almost certainly also be the year of the “AI smartphone” — that is to say handsets leveraging platforms’ GPT models from companies like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft to bring new methods for interacting with consumer devices. Meanwhile, upstart rabbit generated buzz last month at CES for its own unique take on the generative AI-first consumer device.

For its part, Humane has a lot riding on this launch. The company has thus far