Meta Acquires Limitless, Halts Sales of AI Pendant Wearable
Meta Platforms has acquired Limitless, the developer of an AI-powered pendant that records and transcribes conversations, integrating the startup’s team into its Reality Labs wearables division. The deal, announced by Limitless CEO Dan Siroker, aligns with Meta’s push to expand beyond smart glasses into broader AI hardware. Limitless, previously known as Rewind.ai, will cease selling its $99 Pendant device immediately, though existing customers retain support for one year with options to export or delete data.
Limitless raised over $33 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, and New Enterprise Associates since its founding in 2020. The pendant, measuring 1.25 inches wide, clips to clothing or serves as a necklace, using beamforming microphone arrays to capture audio within a 10-foot radius. Its companion app leverages large language models to generate real-time transcripts, searchable summaries, and key insights from interactions, targeting productivity users in meetings and daily life.
The acquisition reflects intensifying competition in AI wearables, where devices augment human memory through continuous sensing. Meta’s move follows Amazon’s July 2025 purchase of Bee, another pendant maker, and precedes OpenAI’s rumored hardware prototypes. Limitless cited market shifts, noting that five years ago, standalone AI recording tools faced less rivalry from tech giants building integrated ecosystems. Siroker stated in the announcement, “When we started Limitless five years ago, the world was very different.”
Meta’s spokesperson confirmed the team’s role in accelerating AI-enabled wearables, potentially enhancing products like the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses co-developed with EssilorLuxottica. Those glasses, updated in September 2025, already incorporate AI for voice commands and photo analysis via a 12-megapixel camera. The Limitless integration could add conversation logging to Meta’s lineup, addressing gaps in passive audio capture. However, the pendant’s always-on recording raises privacy concerns, with features like local processing and end-to-end encryption now transitioning to Meta’s infrastructure.
Regulatory hurdles complicate the shift. Limitless blocked new sales and access in the European Union and United Kingdom effective immediately, citing compliance burdens under the General Data Protection Regulation. Users in those regions must export data by December 19, 2025, after which accounts face permanent deletion. This mirrors broader tensions in AI hardware, where continuous data collection clashes with data minimization rules. Meta’s recent hiring of Apple design executive Alan Dye underscores its hardware ambitions, potentially leading to hybrid devices combining pendants with wristbands or rings.
The deal lacks disclosed financial terms, but analysts view it as a talent acquisition valued under $100 million, given Limitless’s funding history and 50-person team. It bolsters Meta’s “personal superintelligence” vision, articulated by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in October 2025, aiming for ambient AI assistants. Competitors like Plaud and Friend offer similar note-taking pendants, but Meta’s scale—shipping over 1 million Ray-Ban units in 2025—positions it to dominate. Limitless’s Rewind app, once a Mac-based screen recorder with 100,000 downloads, will sunset alongside the hardware pivot.
This consolidation signals a maturing AI wearable market projected to reach $50 billion by 2030, per IDC estimates. Startups face acquisition or obsolescence as incumbents absorb innovations in edge computing and multimodal AI. For U.S. consumers, the change means disrupted access to the Pendant, with alternatives like Otter.ai’s voice recorders filling interim gaps. Meta’s expansion could redefine daily augmentation, blending social data with real-time transcription for seamless recall.
