Meta acquires AI device startup Limitless

Limitless, the AI startup formerly known as Rewind, has been acquired by Meta, the company announced Friday on its website. The company, which made an AI-powered pendant to record your conversations, says it will no longer sell its hardware devices and will maintain support for its existing customers for a year.

Customers will no longer have to pay a subscription and will be moved to the Unlimited Plan for the time being. Other functionality will be wound down, including its non-pendant software “Rewind,” which recorded users desktop activity and turned it into a searchable record.

The startup, founded by Brett Bejcek and Dan Siroker, the co-founder and former chief executive of Optimizely, pivoted to become an AI device maker last year, offering its Limitless pendant for $99. The wearable could attach to your shirt like a wireless mic or be worn like a necklace. The device is one of several AI hardware devices on the market, including another (not very well-received) AI pendant known as Friend.

According to Limitless’ announcement, the company shares in Meta’s vision to “bring personal superintelligence to everyone,” which includes building AI-enabled wearables. (Meta is focused for now on AR/AI glasses, like its Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta, and its in-lens AI glasses, the Meta Ray-Ban Display.) Limitless said it will help bring that vision to life — which likely means supporting Meta’s existing products, not helping Meta add an AI pendant to its lineup.

The company hinted that the increased competition in the market made it difficult for it to compete, especially as the larger players like OpenAI and Meta are developing their own hardware devices, too.

“When we started Limitless five years ago, the world was very different,” wrote Siroker in the announcement. “AI was a pipe dream to many. Hardware startups were considered unfundable, and a business that did both AI and hardware would have been considered ludicrous. But today is different. The world has changed. We’re no longer working on a weird fringe idea. We’re building a future that now seems inevitable. We’re not alone.”

Meta was asked for comment on the acquisition, but one wasn’t provided by the time of publication.

Limitless will offer its customers a way to export their data, the company said, or users can choose to delete their data from within the app.