Humane, one of the most buzzing AI hardware startups in Silicon Valley, announced Tuesday It was acquired partially by HP $116 million, less than $240 million in venture capital raised by startups.
Tuesday may not be a great day for some humanitarian investors, but for nearly 200 employees, it is especially confusing, according to internal documents from TechCrunch and two sources that requested anonymous discussion of private matters.
Sources revealed that several humanitarian employees received job opportunities hours after the acquisition, with salaries increasing by more than 30%, plus HP stock and bonus plans. Several employees who received the offer worked on the company’s core software, although sources also showed that not all those working on the software were given job opportunities.
Meanwhile, other humane employees, especially those closer to AI PIN equipment, including quality assurance, automation and hardware, have been notified that they were out of work on Tuesday night, sources said.
These efforts highlight HP’s interest in obtaining humanitarian software engineer library as part of the acquisition. The hottest commodity in Silicon Valley today is the engineers who can build AI systems. Although Humane’s team did not train AI Foundation models from scratch (such as engineers from OpenAI, Google, and other AI labs), such employees are still highly sought after. This makes it difficult to hire even giant legacy players, such as HP.
HP IQ will not only be the home of Humanitarian co-founder Imran Chaudhri and CEO Bethany Bongiorno, but also the startup, the two companies announced Tuesday. AI operating system Cosmos. The new unit will focus on integrating artificial intelligence into HP’s personal computers, printers and connected conference rooms.
One source said the jobs offer higher salaries, which is exciting for many who offer them.
Improvisation, company-wide meeting
HP’s acquisition is not surprising to humanitarian employees. The New York Times June report said Humanitarian wants to sell itself to HP for more than $1 billionalthough the price ends up being much less.
Humane leaders also told some employees to prepare “big news” for late January, one said.
But this news didn’t come until the second half of February. When doing so, humanitarian employees don’t reach a final agreement to focus too much on reaching, or the AI PIN business will be cut.
Humane Chief of Staff Andie Adragna invited staff around noon Tuesday to an impromptu, company-wide meeting, dispatching Google Meet invitations within an hour, according to an internal letter from TechCrunch. The meeting was held in the company’s San Francisco office and was broadcast live for remote employees.
At the meeting, Bongiorno introduced the acquisition offer to employees before Humanitarian and HP’s press release went live.
At another company-wide meeting later that day, Bongiorno clarified that some employees would work at HP IQ, while others wouldn’t.
Another source said several humanitarian employees were fired by email on Tuesday and immediately accessed the company’s system.
It is unclear that the total number of humanitarian employees affected by the layoffs is unclear. HP and Humans did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Early on, troubled AI hardware boot
Human business has shown signs of struggle for a while.
AI PIN meet immediately Negative comments from early testers – Morale killer of employees of the company. Later, the product was Charging cases are briefly considered fire hazard. Worse, the company’s product engineering supervisor In July, he gave up his startup and started his own company with other humanitarian executives.
Then things got really bad. AI PIN’s revenue exceeds its saleswhich may prompt the company to decline Its AI pin price ranges from $699 to $499.
After the acquisition was announced, Humane told the client that they should “Recycle“Their $499 AI pin, which the startup says will stop working most of the time in less than two weeks.
That said, some employees believe that humanity is a medium success story for a startup.
Most startups won’t sell thousands of devices, attract national attention and are acquired by millions. Startups join these companies to understand the risks of the company’s potential failure, but try anyway. In a humanitarian situation, at least a portion of employees offer a highly paid job at HP and will continue to some of their projects in humanitarianism.
Interestingly, as other AI wearables seem to be picking up, the task of AI PIN is to replace smartphones.
Meta’s Ray Ban AI smart glasses continue to sell well, and the company is reportedly Prepare to release a new version Later this year. Rabbit’s R1 landed at Best Buy This week, the store opened the door for more mainstream electronic consumers. and We are still waiting for a friend’s releaseanother AI startup has created wearable devices to solve loneliness.
The most ironic thing is that Apple This week, the $599 version of the iPhone was released, with AI capabilitiesimitate the functions of the device you want to replace the phone.
AI PIN is almost certainly leading the way – the question now is, how early?
