Amazon has agreed to purchase AI wearables firm Bee, it was announced via a LinkedIn post by the San Francisco-based startup. Bee’s principal product is a $50 wrist device called the Pioneer that records all audio within range unless manually muted. Combined with a $19 per month subscription the device records and transcribes “daily memories” to create to-do lists and reminders based on what it hears. It can also answer questions. Bee’s website says the product is backordered due to “high demand” with shipments resuming in September. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

“At a $50 price point, Bee’s devices are more cost-accessible to a curious consumer who doesn’t want to make a big financial commitment,” writes TechCrunch, citing “the ill-fated” $500 Humane AI Pin and Rabbit’s $200 AI assistant, the r1, a puck-sized device that fits into a purse or pocket.

Amazon has made heavy investments in AI, and purchasing Bee could reignite its presence in wearables, potentially providing direct mobile connectivity for always-on apps like its Alexa assistant and Ring door monitor.

Earlier, Amazon “experimented in the wearables space through a health and fitness-focused product called Halo,” a health-tracking bracelet decommissioned in 2023 “as part of a broader cost-cutting review,” reports CNBC.

Meta, Snap, Samsung and TCL are among those seriously investing in smart glasses that function as wearable AI assistants, and in May OpenAI spent a reported $6.4 billion to acquire Jony Ive’s AI device startup for roughly $6.4 billion” with plans to productize an “AI companion” that is aware of its surroundings and comes in a compact, screenless form factor.

In a LinkedIn post, Bee CEO and co-founder Maria de Lourdes Zollo describes her company’s product as offering “truly personal, agentic AI,” adding that it will help customers have their lives “understood and enhanced by technology that learns with you.”

TechCrunch says that personal AI devices “come with a number of security and privacy risks, given that they record everything around them.”

Bee’s privacy policy states “users can delete their data at any time and that audio recordings are not saved, stored, or used for AI training,” writes TechCrunch, which adds that “the app does store data that the AI learns about the user.”

Incorporated as Bluush Inc. in 2022, Bee has raised roughly $8.5 million in funding, according to Bloomberg, which reports that “all Bee employees received offers to join Amazon as part of the deal.”

Related:
Why Amazon Wants an AI Bracelet That Records Everything You Say, The Wall Street Journal, 7/23/25
Meta Unveils Wristband for Controlling Computers with Hand Gestures, The New York Times, 7/23/25