Humane Is Killing Its Disastrous AI Pin: Here's Who Gets Their Money Back

Humane, the buzzy startup from former Apple executives that made a wearable AI gadget, is shutting down. At noon Pacific time on Feb. 28, all Humane AI Pins sold will stop connecting to servers and cease to work. HP has agreed to take over the company's assets in a deal valued at roughly $116 million, while the AI Pin dreams will be abandoned.

There is no word why the product has been canceled, and what exactly HP intends to do with the acquisition. "We are winding down the Ai pin as we are moving onto new endeavors," Humane said in a customer note, without going into details. 

However, the writing has been on the wall since the beginning, in April 2024. Despite taking a wearable route with a local AI assistant and a holographic display tied to gesture-based control, the AI Pin failed to leave a lasting impression. Not that the idea was bad, but the execution was panned widely. The absence of integration with core services an average person has to regularly visit was the fundamental problem.

Performance inconsistencies, lack of adequate app support, a charging-related recall, poor battery life, and sluggish response were other major woes. The AI Pin probably always had a very small chance to flourish as a new product category of its own, let alone replace smartphones. Plus, an initial price tag of $699 — dropped in October to $499 — and an additional $24-per-month subscription didn't do it any favors.

Humane has put a refund policy in place for the AI Pin as well as the charging case, but the terms will leave early adopters fuming. The company says the only units eligible for a refund are within a 90-day window for return, calculated from the day they were shipped. In other words, only owners of devices with a shipment date of Nov. 15, 2024 or later will get back their money. There are no trade-in or buy-back programs, either. So if you aren't in the refund pool, you'll be left with a fancy gadget that will show you battery levels, but won't link up with a data center or offer any of its fancy AI or talkback features.

Customers who placed an order, but haven't started the onboarding process, are also eligible for a full refund. But refunds will need to be claimed before Feb. 27, just before Humane's server shutdown and data deletion. As for the charging case, which ended up on a recall shelf over heating hazards, refunds will be issued to customers who opted to get a replacement unit and were still waiting to receive it. 

Subscriptions will be terminated on the server shutdown date. All active subscriptions paid for in advance, and extending beyond Feb. 28, will be refunded on a prorated basis. As for the pins themselves, Humane has a suggestion: "We encourage you to recycle your Ai Pin through an e-waste recycling program."