After rebooting the Pebble smartwatch model, founder Eric Migicovsky is increasing his firm’s machine lineup with a brand new sensible wearable: an AI-powered sensible ring referred to as Index 01. Named for the finger the place the ring is supposed to be worn, the brand new $75 ring will not be meant to be a competitor to always-on, always-listening AI units, just like the AI pendant Pal, however as an alternative provides a approach to report fast notes and reminders with a press of a button on the ring’s aspect.
AI solely comes into play by way of the open supply, speech-to-text, and AI fashions that run regionally in your smartphone by means of the Pebble cell app. That’s, if the ring’s button will not be being pressed, it’s not recording. (And this can be a press-and-maintain gesture, too, which implies you possibly can’t begin the ring’s recording after which let go to surreptitiously report a dialog.)
You may put on the chrome steel ring whereas within the bathe, washing arms, doing dishes, or within the rain, however you would need to take it off for different water-related actions, like swimming. At launch, it’s waterproof to 1 meter.
The ring can also be not a health tracker or sleep monitor. It doesn’t report particulars about your coronary heart fee or well being. And it’s not there to be your AI good friend.
“I’m not trying to build some AI assistant thing,” Migicovsky informed TechCrunch in an interview. “I build things that solve one main problem, and they solve it really well,” he explains. “I think of [the ring] as external memory for my brain…that’s what this is. It’s always with you.”
Plus, the ring has been designed to be extremely dependable and privacy-preserving, he says, as all of your ideas are saved in your telephone, not within the cloud. There isn’t a subscription.
Migicovsky’s ring enters a rising marketplace for voice-note wearables. Final month, Sandbar, a New York-based startup based by former Meta staff, unveiled its Stream Ring, which additionally lets customers report ideas by way of a touch-activated microphone. Nonetheless, in contrast to Index 01’s no-subscription mannequin, Sandbar’s $249 ring provides each a free tier with restricted AI interactions and a $10-per-month Stream Professional subscription for limitless chats and early entry to options. The Stream Ring is anticipated to ship subsequent summer time.
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Migicovsky has been carrying his personal ring for 3 months now and says he can’t think about going again to a world the place he doesn’t all the time have a reminiscence machine with him.
“The problem is that, during the day, I get ideas or I remember something, and if I don’t write it down that second, I forget it,” he says. The ring solves this downside, he provides, with out turning into one other machine it’s worthwhile to cost.
“The battery lasts for years,” Migicovsky claims.
The ring is alleged to help roughly 12 to 14 hours of recording. On common, the founder says he makes use of it 10 to twenty occasions per day to report 3-to-6-second ideas. At that fee, he’ll get about two years of utilization. When the ring’s battery dies, you possibly can ship it again to the corporate for recycling.
When utilizing the Index, you possibly can report as much as 5 minutes of audio, which will be saved to the ring and synced to your telephone later. This is sensible for recording briefer, private ideas and notes, even if you don’t have your telephone useful, but it surely wouldn’t work for recording an extended chat, like a presentation, assembly, or in-person interview of some type.
The ring additionally helps greater than 100 languages and has a little bit of on-device reminiscence for occasions if you’re not in Bluetooth vary of your machine, the place the recording is finally saved and transcribed. (The uncooked audio is retained, too, in case the speech-to-text is garbled as a result of loud background noise.)
If you happen to personal a Pebble smartwatch or one from one other model, your recorded thought may even seem on the watch’s display so you possibly can confirm it’s appropriate.
The ring works with Pebble’s cell app, which provides notes and reminders, however can optionally combine along with your telephone’s calendaring system, too, or different apps, like Notion. And the ring’s software program is open supply, which makes it hackable by the neighborhood, the founder factors out.
Due to its open nature, the ring’s button is already programmable. Along with the press-and-hold gesture, you possibly can program the ring to do different issues with a single or double press, like play or pause your music or management the shutter in your telephone’s digital camera. You could possibly use it to ship a message by means of the common chat app Beeper, which Migicovsky additionally created, or you would add your individual voice actions by way of MCP.
A brand new method to {hardware}
Migicovsky acknowledges that {hardware} will be tough to get proper, as Pebble’s exit to Fitbit confirmed. (Fitbit was later acquired by Google in 2021.)
“I didn’t earn any money during Pebble — we exited, but it was not a great exit,” Migicovsky admits.
This yr, nonetheless, he determined to reboot the Pebble mission after Google open-sourced PebbleOS, which opened the door to new {hardware}.
Together with his new firm, Core Units, Migicovsky plans to do issues otherwise.
Nonetheless, the founder doesn’t remorse his earlier decisions, he clarifies.
“I wouldn’t have gone back and changed anything. I loved what we built. I loved what we did. I love the company that we built, but it’s not the only way to build a company,” he informed TechCrunch. “And speaking as an ex-YC partner, there’s a time and a place for building a venture-backed startup. Some companies are phenomenal when they raise money and build a big team, and I tried that…What I’m doing now is trying an alternative path, which is [to] start from profitability,” he says.
The brand new firm is a small workforce of 5, self-funded, and centered on sustainability.
To date, Core Units has shipped the Pebble 2 Duo smartwatch with a black-and-white show. Its first run offered out, and the corporate is now making ready to ship the upgraded model, the Pebble Time 2. The newer machine, which has seen 25,000 pre-orders, is a chrome steel watch with a bigger, shade e-ink display.
As for the Index 01, the ring’s pre-order provide ends in March 2026. After that, the worth will increase to $99. It at present is available in silver, polished gold, and matte black and works with iOS and Android units. Prospects can choose from eight ring sizes, starting from 6 to 13.
