Jeff’s Note: Tonight’s the night.
In just one hour, I’m sitting down with a trading legend – “Market Wizard” Larry Benedict – to discuss what could become your favorite way to make money in 2025.
A type of trade called “0DTE” is quickly becoming a market force… and regular folks are rushing to pull out incredible gains. Many have been able to double their money (or more) in one single day.
Even better, these 0DTE trades are handing you another exciting way to earn massive profits from the AI boom – practically overnight.
So if you want to learn more about 0DTE, this is your perfect opportunity. Larry and I are inviting you to The Overnight AI Gains Summit tonight where we’ll cover all the details.
You can go here to make sure your name is on the guest list… We’ll see you soon.
Veiled in secrecy for years, it was spoken of as the next revolutionary consumer electronics company…
It promised a next-generation device with the cache of an Apple product…infused with artificial intelligence.
The Humane AI Pin…
Source: Humane
The device, attached to the yellow vest above on her left shoulder, was envisioned to be a small, clip-on device that would attach to your clothes. It would have a forward-facing camera and a small projector designed to project graphics onto a surface – like a table or your hand – and would be powered by something like Grok-3, which we explored in yesterday’s Bleeding Edge – Can You Grok It?
That was the idea, at least.
Humane was founded by Bethany Bongiorno – a former Director of Software Engineering at Apple – and Imran Chaudhri – another tenured Apple executive known for his work on Apple’s iPod, iPad, Apple Watch, and iPhone.
They certainly had the street credibility to sell their vision.
So much so that between summer 2019 and summer 2023, Humane was able to raise almost a quarter of a billion dollars ($241 million) from sophisticated investors and venture capital firms like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, Tiger Global, Softbank, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and many others.
I had the opportunity to invest in Humane in the summer of 2023, but I passed. It was a hard no. And I’m glad I did.
Most investors in Humane will almost certainly lose the majority of their investment capital. Hewlett Packard Inc. (HPQ) just announced that it would be acquiring the technology, patents, and parts of the Humane team to “reinvent the future of work” for the price of $116 million, which is a painful haircut from its 2023 valuation of $850 million.
It’s a corporate acquihire that comes with whatever patents Humane owns. And the product, the AI Pin, will be discontinued by the end of this month with no fanfare whatsoever.
What a painful and inhumane ending to what was supposed to be the next great consumer electronics fad.
The AI Pin was a powerful computer based on a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. It was also designed to connect to 4G wireless networks, as well as Wi-Fi, which means that it could operate independently of a smartphone.
Humane’s AI was largely based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and with a forward-facing camera, it could “see” what the user was looking at and provide appropriate answers.
Source: Humane
Using the forward-facing projector it could also project messages or information onto a hand or tabletop. It was an interesting idea, but the reality was that an audio interface was more than sufficient.
Source: Humane
It could even translate menus or even speech into 48 different languages.
Source: Humane
At least, all of these features were what Humane intended but never really achieved.
I remember seeing a video of the TED talk in 2023 when the AI Pin was first demonstrated publicly. The demo was clunky, the response times were slow from the device, and parts of the demo felt like they had been faked.
It came as a surprise to me that Time magazine had named the AI Pin as one of the best inventions of 2023 that October. Apparently, they fell for it…
Source: Time
After that, it was all downhill from there…
The entire product strategy was premised on the need for an entirely new category of consumer electronics through which consumers would interact with AI. That made no sense; it was unnecessary, and it’s the reason why I chose not to invest.
The key selling point of the device was artificial intelligence (AI) – the idea of a reasoning model that would have immense utility like Grok-3. And yet, Humane was relying entirely on OpenAI for its AI software.
And the AI Pin cost $699 and required a monthly subscription of $24 to cover the cost of the 4G wireless connectivity.
The reality is that Humane’s AI Pin added friction for its users. The AI Pin would have to be attached and detached from clothing every day and from a jacket to a shirt when indoors or outdoors. Additional friction came in the high device cost and monthly subscription fee.
Increased friction is always an impediment to adoption.
And Humane’s strategy missed perhaps the most obvious point that I’m sure many of you are thinking…
Our smartphones running GPT-4o or Grok-3 can already do everything that the AI Pin can do. Why on Earth would we need to pay so much extra for that device?
Which raises the question… why on Earth did HP pay $116 million for it?
I’m confident that HP overpaid for the Humane’s assets, but it’s not like it doesn’t have the money. HP (HPQ) has $3.2 billion in cash and will generate $3.4 billion in free cash flow this year, so it can overpay for acquisitions.
Most acquihires like this almost always require key staff to agree to stay with the company for at least a year, sometimes more, as they lock up key talent with large stock grants that vest over time and milestone bonuses.
The reality is that one of the hardest things for large, bureaucratic, stale enterprise companies like HP is to recruit very talented, entrepreneurial staff. Acquiring large teams through what are largely asset sales is a great way to solve that problem.
And that’s what HP has done.
But there is something else to the deal, and it’s probably the most valuable asset that HP acquired.
It purchased Humane’s electronics operating system – CosmOS – which was built from the ground up to integrate with artificial intelligence.
It seems obvious that HP’s strategy is to leverage CosmOS across its own electronics products like laptops, printers, and other office-related electronics devices. Not only did it need technology like that, it needed the people to implement the software… hence the acquihire. If HP can retain the engineering talent and execute well, its acquisition may actually work out well.
And to be clear, the next great consumer electronics craze will come in the form of augmented reality glasses once the cost and performance improve over the next two years. A pair of sunglasses is something that we all own and use. And with the upgraded lenses of augmented reality glasses, we have projection “screens” right in front of our eyes. Using them will require no behavioral changes.
AR glasses are simply an upgrade to something that we already use regularly. They will provide fantastic utility from a productivity standpoint when coupled with an AI like Grok-3, as well as the dopamine hits users get from social media and gaming applications when used for fun.
The “killer” user interface will quickly become a voice, and the killer app will quickly become a reasoning AI model with agentic capabilities and a memory that understands our history and preferences.
And all we’ll have to do to use it is just talk…no friction required.
Jeff
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
