RIP Humane Pin

Happy Thursday everyone.

One of the first movers in wearable AI, the Humane Pin, is officially dead. Humane agreed to sell most of its assets to HP for $116 million. There is no indication that this is the “pop” of the AI bubble, but it does show the risks for investors taking sky-high valuations (Humane raised over $230 million, ouch) and for early adopters who now own a $699, useless metal clip with a blurry camera.

Humane might have failed because it moved too early and succumbed to the pressure of making returns on their $1 billion+ valuation. But many would say that the Humane Pin was just a terrible product. Complaints cited a bad camera, huge lag in responses, hallucinations, and poor battery life, with Youtuber MKBHD saying it was the “Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed”. 

Maybe some of the other physical AI assistants will get it right, players like limitless.ai or friend.com have similar offerings. I genuinely hope they do. The idea of an always on AI a-la the movie Her, strikes some as dystopian, but executed correctly it might be less dystopian than our current reliance on screens and smartphones, constantly designed to hook our attention with slot-machine-style addictive algorithms.

Startups Outcomes

Speaking of Humane’s exit, some people say “9 of 10 startups fail”. That’s hard to verify, but how many startups actually make it to a successful outcome? Well, Carta puts out some data based on companies on their platform, which can give insight into the range of outcomes for VC backed startups.

Speed, Small Teams, Big Value

$100,000 salary used to be shorthand for “making it.” It’s still well above the median U.S. salary of $66,622, but in high-cost cities like NYC or SF, it no longer feels like the promised land of wealth. A similar shift is happening—much more rapidly—in startups.

$1M ARR is impressive. It signals a startup has moved from 0 to 1, has customers, and a potential growth path. But the perspective changing thanks (or no thanks) to AI companies. An investor I spoke with this week made two key points:

1. We’re in a paradigm shift—$10M ARR in the first 1-2 years is becoming common. They’ve seen more of these in the past six months than in the past decade. The gap between the best and the rest is widening.

2. The timeline to unicorn status is shrinking. It used to take around seven years. Now, if you don’t hit it in 2-3 years, you likely never will.

That’s just one investor’s perspective, but it reflects a broader acceleration, largely driven by AI startups.

VC firms need outsized winners to return their increasingly massive funds, which puts even more pressure on startups to grow at breakneck speed. In the worst cases, this could mean successful but slower-growing companies get written off. Ben Lang compiled a list of some of the fastest growing small teams, and their growth is impressive.

SIGNALS

• Microsoft unveiled a new quantum computing chip, “1/100th of a millimeter, meaning we now have a clear path to a million-qubit processor.”

• Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former CTO, is founding a new AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab. Murati (CEO) is joined by OpenAI veterans Barret Zoph (CTO) and John Schulman (Chief Scientist)

The Job Board

This week, a more unusual position in venture: A PhD fellowship at Positron Ventures. Traditional venture paths might look like Founder-Operator-Business School-Investor, but the venture market continues to cover all industries, and there are always roles for very smart people with niche expertise, especially in highly technical areas or the hard sciences. Job Below:

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