Humane in talks to license OS, has demo running on car dashboard

Now this is interesting: Embattled AI hardware startup Humane is in talks with multiple parties about licensing the OS that powers its much-maligned AI Pin, Om Malik is reporting in his new Crazy Stupid Tech newsletter (which you should subscribe to if you haven’t yet). Malik recently sat down with Humane’s co-founders to chat about their journey and the new OS licensing strategy, and he apparently also got a demo of the company’s software, dubbed CosmOS, running on a peculiar piece of third-party hardware:

“I saw demos of CosmOS performing AI Pin-like functions while operating inside a car’s dashboard. You could interact with the car’s dashboard by talking to it—call up your calendar, get directions, and update your next appointment for any delays. It made a smart speaker much more intelligent than, say, an Alexa device.”

This isn’t the first time that someone has brought up the possibility of Humane moving away from making hardware. In June, the New York Times did a long story about everything that went wrong at the startup, which included a device that got so hot that Humane executives reportedly put it on ice packs before showing it to prospective investors.

That article also included the tidbit that Humane had been talking to HP and others about a potential sale, as well as a possible licensing of its technology. And while that sounded a bit like damage control (companies would obviously prefer you to think that they’re talking to potential partners, not acquirers), it now appears those licensing talks may have been real.

The problem with that is that it’s a bit hard to define what Humane’s OS actually is. The AI pin runs a modified version of AOSP, and Humane uses ChatGPT for a lot of its AI functionality. What sets the company apart from the competition, according to Malik, is its agent model that functions as a replacement for traditional apps. 

“You don’t say, ‘I need to start the calendar app so that I can make a date,’ you just tell the machine to make a date and the agent does it,” Malik wrote this week.

Is that enough to attract other hardware makers, especially as many of the companies whose services you’d want those agents to interact with are working on their own AI assistants? And is automotive – a notoriously slow-moving industry that is already being courted by Apple, Amazon and Google – really the right potential partner for a startup like Humane?

Humane’s founders, meanwhile, insist that the OS licensing wouldn’t be a pivot, and that they’re committed to their own first-party hardware as well. Speaking of which: On Wednesday, the company announced a significant price cut to get the AI Pin onto more people’s shirts.

This article was first published as part of Lowpass, a weekly newsletter about AR, VR, streaming and more. Sign up now for free.