Amazon is shopping for Bee, a small San Francisco startup behind a $49.99 wearable wrist machine designed to report and transcribe conversations.
Bee CEO and co-founder Maria de Lourdes Zollo introduced the acquisition on LinkedIn, saying that deal will “assist us convey actually private, agentic AI to much more prospects.”
“Once we began Bee, we imagined a world the place AI is actually private, the place your life is known and enhanced by know-how that learns with you,” she mentioned. “What started as a dream with an unbelievable group and group now finds a brand new house at Amazon.”
Phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Bee is one in every of a number of startups growing wearables that take heed to every part you say and switch recordings into summaries and insights. Bee additionally integrates electronic mail, calendar, contacts and extra information.
Bee says it doesn’t retailer audio recordings and makes use of the “highest safety requirements.” It’s additionally testing on-device AI fashions.
“We design our merchandise to guard our prospects’ privateness and safety and to make it simple for them to be answerable for their expertise — and this strategy would after all apply to Bee,” an Amazon spokesperson mentioned in a press release to GeekWire.
Bee staff have obtained affords to affix Amazon, in accordance with the spokesperson.
It’s not clear how Amazon plans to combine Bee into its current units or broader AI technique. Different tech giants embrace OpenAI and Meta are growing private AI assistant {hardware} and software program merchandise.
Based final 12 months, Bee raised a $7 million spherical from Exor, Greycroft, New Wave VC, Banana Capital, and different buyers. The corporate is led by Zollo and CTO/co-founder Ethan Sutin. Each beforehand labored at Twitter and Squad (acquired by Twitter).
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