Bee AI Secures $7M to Launch Wearable AI Assistant That Learns from Your Chats

Bee AI, a new company in the field of wearable AI, has raised $7 million to make a wearable assistant that will manage notes, reminders, and lists, and promises to make users’ lives easier and more private.

A lot of companies are trying to make wearable hardware so that people can use AI in their daily lives. This is because AI and large language models (LLMs) promise to be able to understand more context and make sense of that information easily.

Bee AI is the newest company in this field. Exor led a $7 million round to complete the development of Bee AI’s wearable AI assistant, which is capable of listening to you, taking notes, setting contextual reminders, and creating lists. The business also has an app for the Apple Watch. In addition to today’s announcement, the startup has already secured $1.5 million in pre-seed funding. Greycroft, New Wave VC, Banana Capital, and Brian Bedol, an investor and TV executive who founded several sports networks, also supported the new round.

Maria de Lourdes Zollo, co-founder and CEO of Bee AI, said that the software that runs the assistant is what the company does best. However, the company also made it wearable so that the app doesn’t have to constantly use the user’s phone mic.

While the device and app offer a multitude of uses, the startup has ambitious plans. She said that the business wants to give all of its customers a “cloud phone,” which is a copy of their phone that lets them access their accounts and alerts.

Currently, the company is testing features such as reading your notifications and receiving alerts about important messages and events, writing emails or tweets, and receiving shopping suggestions whenever you desire.

At the moment, the device only has a mute button that stops recording. However, the company is also looking into ways to make the button work with commands.

Because generative AI is still pretty new, there are doubts about its ability to produce accurate data. This implies that Bee AI is venturing into an untrustworthy space.

Startups like Rabbit have tried using AI agents that can go through an interface and do different things for you. But early reviews and demos show that the process isn’t quite reliable yet.

A few startups are still working on the problem, striving to be the first to get it right. With A16z backing, Limitless and Friend are making wearables that do some of Bee AI’s work for different purposes.

For her part, de Lourdes Zollo believes that AI agents will get better as new models come out. She also said that Bee AI is cautious by focusing on a few tasks.

De Lourdes Zollo started Bee AI with Ethan Sutin (CTO). She had previously worked with Sutin at Squad, a video chat app that he founded with Esther Crawford, who is also an angel investor in Bee AI. Both of them also worked at Twitter.

Sutin was the head of engineering at Twitter, and de Lourdes Zollo helped the company launch Twitter Spaces.

Greycroft’s Ian Sigalow Invests in Bee AI

Investors in the company seem to trust the team’s background. Ian Sigalow, managing partner at Greycroft, said he saw a lot of potential in the team and chose to invest because of that. “I usually put my money into great founding teams.” With Bee AI, you have engineers on your team who are one-of-a-kind.

Many of them have successfully delivered products to millions of Twitter users during their tenure at a company such as Twitter. He said, “I think that’s a great strength.”

He also believes that if you train large language models well, you could make a lot of money by making a product that can smoothly switch between hardware and the cloud.

Using a device that constantly listens will raise privacy concerns. Though in beta, the product uses what others near the user say to help the model learn more about the user.  Having said that, the company intends to discontinue the use of non-users voices before launch if they have not granted permission for recording.

Also, Bee AI says that its platform doesn’t store any audio files and only uses transcripts to find out more about the user. Bee AI costs $49, and you’ll have to pay $19 a month to use it. The business plans to start taking orders before Thanksgiving.