Tech enthusiasts are marking November 9 on the calendar because Humane’s first gadget, the AI Pin, is going to launch. The brainchild of former Apple employees Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri, the company has been largely shrouded in mystery, as it has been bringing together pieces of a mystery wearable.

The AI Pin has been announced as one of Time magazine’s ‘Best Inventions of 2023’. The device may reshape how we interact and it goes beyond screens. The AI Pin reportedly attaches magnetically to your clothing and uses “a mix of proprietary software and OpenAI’s GPT-4” to power many features. Some time ago, we caught a glimpse of the device in action. It’s a puck-like device with a camera, projector and speaker.

The Time magazine article offers a good look at the device, which has a Trust Light that lights up anytime the device’s camera, microphone, or other sensors are recording data in some way. It was also seen at Paris Fashion Week.

Humane is a well-funded early-stage startup. At the tail end of 2020, it raised a $30 million Series A at a $150 million valuation. The $100 million B round came the following September. This March, it went ahead and raised another $100 million.

The company is not about showcasing what’s possible beyond Apple. It is about the changes that are coming in general. The founders had a brilliant run at Apple. Chaudhri arrived in the Cupertino-based company in 1995 as an intern in the Advanced Technologies Group (a corporate research laboratory at Apple Computer from 1986 to 1997) and two years later, after finishing school, he was there again. By this time, Steve Jobs had returned to Apple, giving the company a new direction. He had brilliant ideas and many of them were implemented. Bethany joined in 2008 soon after the first iPhone was shipped.