Humane's AI Pin bets on a screenless wearable that projects its UI onto your hand

Humane was founded by ex-Apple veterans Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno with a simple conviction: the smartphone interface — the home screen, the apps, the notifications — had become the problem. Their answer, the AI Pin, was a phone without a screen: a small square you clip to your shirt, which you control by talking, tapping, or gesturing, while an operating system called Cosmos routes each request to the right AI model instead of asking you to open an app.

Announced on 9 November 2023 at $699 with a $24-per-month subscription, the Pin combined a Snapdragon processor, a 13-megapixel camera, a touchpad, and a tiny laser projector. Lift your palm and a green interface is drawn on your hand — messages, timers, media controls. A 'Trust Light' blinked whenever it was collecting data, and a T-Mobile LTE connection kept it online. The company pitched it as the beginning of a post-smartphone future where people spend less time buried in screens.

The idea landed with unusual force. The launch film and Chaudhri's TED demonstration turned the Pin into one of the most anticipated gadgets of the year, and preorders opened two weeks later. Wired's review opened by noting that the buzz had reached even the reviewer's mother's local TV news; The Verge summarized the concept as 'a phone without a screen... not just an app; it's all the apps.'

Then the product shipped, in April 2024, and the gap between idea and execution became visible: slow answers, an overheating body, a projector that was nearly invisible in daylight, and few features beyond party tricks. Reviews were scathing, returns began to outpace sales, and the Pin became the cautionary tale of the AI hardware wave rather than its flagship.