Rabbit R1 has just 5,000 active users, as we wait to see Jony Ive’s attempt at AI hardware

Former Apple design chief Jony Ive this week confirmed he’s working Sam Altman on an AI hardware product of some kind, despite the failure of existing products like the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1.

Humane last month admitted that returns were exceeding sales, and now Rabbit founder Jesse Lyu has confessed that the R1 has just 5,000 active users …

Lyu was surprisingly frank when talking about the product at the Fast Company Innovation Festival.

“The fact is, the early bad reviews didn’t kill us, right?” he added. 

(MKBHD famously described the Rabbit R1 as “barely reviewable,” with commenters saying he’d killed the company.)

Lyu said that, now, around 5,000 people use the R1 daily, and his team has pushed 16 over-the-air updates to the R1 since its initial ship date. He views the R1 as an interactive product; and believes that it’s imperative for hardware startups embrace imperfect if they want to be part of a conversation. “If you’re a startup, you better ship early, period,” he said.

Yet despite this, there are more attempts on the way. There’s NotePin coming soon, and a Limitless Pendant in the works.

So far, none of these have succeeded in changing my view that AI hardware is like trying to invent the iPod after the iPhone.

The iPod was one of the greatest inventions in the world … at the time. But much as I still love that concept, to me it no longer makes sense to carry a dedicated chunk of hardware just to play all the music I own, when I can instead use the device which is already in my pocket to play (almost) all the music in the world, whether or not I own it.

It’s the same thing with AI hardware today. If smartphones didn’t exist, these devices would be enormously exciting, and I’d want one, despite their current limitations. But smartphones do exist, and I can’t see a single reason why these devices aren’t simply apps.

Ray-Ban Meta Glasses did win me over, but more for the ease of POV video and future AI potential than the AI capabilities they have today.

I’m not going to bet against Ive and Altman, but neither am I going to be wishing I could invest.

Photo: Rabbit