People are returning Humane Ai Pin en masse. According to The Verge, between May and August 2024, the number of returns outpaced sales. In total, about 7,000 devices remained in the possession of buyers, although the manufacturer expected to sell 100,000 units in the first year alone.

According to internal data, sales of artificial intelligence foam have brought in about $9 million over the lifetime of the product. But about 1,000 purchases were canceled after the first reviews appeared. And out of 10,000 thousand devices sold, 3,000 have already been returned.

At the same time, about $200 million was raised for the development, provided by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

Sources say that once the foams are returned, the company is unable to restore them. The device is effectively disposable – Humane has no way to generate revenue from its re-sale. The main problem is that there is a T-Mobile restriction that makes it impossible (for now) for Humane to reassign a pin to a new user after it has already been assigned to someone.

According to the company’s employees, Vice President of Engineering Jeremy Werner, CTO Patrick Gates, and Head of Product Development Ken Kotsienda left Humane without any explanation.

“As someone who strives to build products with the craft and quality of Apple, it pains me to admit that The Apple Way can destroy a lot of startups,” Benjamin Sandofsky writes in his article for Humane.