In 2022, Rewind had simply raised $10 million from a16z and was constructing a private knowledge recording service that promised to privately file your exercise and allow you to search via your individual historical past. However that was earlier than OpenAI launched ChatGPT.
Right this moment, generative AI could make what Rewind had constructed beforehand — a searchable file of your exercise — much more helpful. It’s not so stunning, then, to see the startup pivoting to combine AI extra deeply into its product. The corporate has rebranded to “Limitless,” and is now providing an AI-powered assembly suite and a {hardware} pendant that may file your conversations.
Firm co-founder Dan Siroker first posted the concept of a conversation-recording pendant final October and began accepting orders at $59. In January, he posted that the corporate had finalized a design and goals to ship the product in This autumn 2024.
Siroker posted the ultimate design this week, together with the information of the corporate’s pivot. The $99 pendant was posted on X earlier this week. The corporate is accepting preorders and goals to ship the primary batch in August. Siroker stated that the corporate plans to honor the preliminary preorders at $59. Earlier on Wednesday, he posted that the startup has already acquired greater than 10,000 preorders for the product.
Product options and the pivot
The Limitless pendant can simply connect to your shirt like a wi-fi mic or tie it like a necklace with a string and file conversations. The first use case is recording and transcribing conferences, so that you don’t need to take notes. The corporate claims that the gadget is weather-proof, has a 100-hour battery life, and may be charged simply via a USB-C port.
The {hardware} additionally has a “consent mode,” which doesn’t file the opposite particular person within the dialog except they expressly comply with be recorded. It’s not clear if this mode can be on by default.
Whereas the corporate is just a few months away from transport the {hardware} product, it has already launched an app — out there on the internet, Mac and Home windows — to file conferences. The app makes use of system audio and a microphone to file, so there is no such thing as a want for a bot to affix these conferences.
The app has options we’ve got seen in assembly instruments like Otter, Zoom, TimeOS and TLDV. Siroker instructed TechCrunch that the corporate goals to distinguish with instruments like real-time automated notes and mechanically generated assembly briefs based mostly on the individuals and former conferences.
The app is free and comes with limitless audio storage and 10 hours monthly of AI options like transcription, abstract and notes. Limitless AI options are $29 monthly, or $19 monthly if paid yearly.
Picture Credit: Limitless
Siroker stated one of many main differentiators is the corporate’s new confidential cloud product that shops knowledge in an encrypted format. Whereas Rewind was largely a neighborhood product, the brand new cloud permits customers to entry knowledge wherever.
Siroker stated the corporate had Leviathan Safety Group carry out a third-party audit on its resolution to measure safety.
“Confidential Cloud would possibly sound like an oxymoron, however it isn’t. It’s non-public by design. Not like the normal cloud, your employer, us as a software program supplier, and the federal government can not decrypt your knowledge with out your permission, even when given a subpoena. Solely you management the decryption of your knowledge,” he instructed TechCrunch.
The best way forward
On its web site, Rewind says it has raised over $33 million in funding from backers together with a16z, First Spherical Capital and NEA. The corporate stated it hadn’t used any cash from final yr’s uncommon Sequence A spherical — the place it referred to as for traders by posting a video on X — so it doesn’t plan to lift any new cash.
The corporate stated it’ll proceed to assist Rewind in its present state however won’t actively add new options. This implies the startup received’t ship the Home windows app it had promised to construct final yr.
“We don’t have any plans to close down or merge Rewind into Limitless. We plan to reimplement lots of our person’s favourite Rewind options instantly into Limitless,” Siroker stated.
“Customers may even use each merchandise side-by-side and determine which one they like higher. We hope that over time, they may agree with us that the Limitless method is best and that they may use that solely.”
The corporate has stated that the {hardware} product will reply questions via an AI-powered bot based mostly on assembly recordings, connections with private accounts, and knowledge on the internet. It would additionally provide a platform for builders to construct apps or experiences surrounding the product.
However Limitless’s bigger imaginative and prescient is to construct AI brokers to do issues in your behalf. This appears to be the pattern for startups working with AI. {Hardware} startups like Humane and Rabbit try to make gadgets with AI instruments in them which are promised to be highly effective sufficient to maintain some duties for you.
Browsers like The Browser Firm’s Arc and YC-backed Sigma OS are additionally constructing brokers to browse the net for you. Nevertheless, there are lots of unknowns as output by AI bots continues to be filled with errors, and at occasions, it’s laborious to make AI perceive the context and intentions of your question. AI-powered brokers performing some work on behalf of you positive sounds dreamy, however we’d have to attend for some time to get there.
