Amazon buys startup Bee, maker of low-cost smart bracelet with artificial intelligence
The Pioneer bracelet records and transcribes its wearer's actions to create to-do lists and conversation summaries.
The Pioneer bracelet records and transcribes its wearer's actions to create to-do lists and conversation summaries.
Maria de Lourdes Zollo, co-founder of the San Francisco startup, announced the deal in a short post on LinkedIn, noting that their dream is “finding a new home at Amazon.”
Amazon spokeswoman Alexandra Miller assured that the company's approach to customer privacy, which applies to all of its products, will be extended to the Bee. She noted that the Pioneer device has an off button, but by default it works as a permanent transcriptionist.
Pioneer records everything it hears for further analysis of conversations, creating reminders and to-do lists for the user. The gadget costs $49.99 and a $19 per month subscription.
Bee has previously said it plans to record voices only from people who have given verbal consent. Bee also says it is working on a feature that will allow users to set boundaries for the AI, including what topics it can record conversations about. The company said it plans to build AI processing on the device, which generally poses less privacy risk than processing data in the cloud.
Bee, a startup founded in 2022, has raised about $8.5 million from investors. All Bee employees have received offers to join Amazon. The parties did not disclose the amount of the deal.
The Bee acquisition could signal the company's renewed interest in the space, as well as the possible integration of Bee's technologies into future Alexa devices, which were relaunched with a new AI core this year.
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