Meta Bets Beyond the Face: Why Mark Zuckerberg Wants an AI on Your Lapel
Mark Zuckerberg wants to clip an AI to your shirt, not just your face.
Meta has acquired Limitless, the startup behind the AI-powered "Pendant," in a move that signals a distinct pivot in the tech giant's hardware ambitions. While the company has spent billions trying to strap computers to our eyes via VR headsets and Ray-Ban smart glasses, this purchase confirms an appetite for hardware that is less intrusive—and perhaps more pervasive.
The acquisition, announced via a YouTube video and blog post by Limitless, explicitly states the team will work on "building consumer hardware" for Meta. The message is clear: Meta’s hardware roadmap is expanding, and it’s coming for your lapel.
Chasing "Personal Superintelligence"
The strategy here is ostensibly about Meta’s obsession with AGI. According to Limitless CEO Dan Siroker, the acquisition feeds Meta’s hunger to "bring personal superintelligence to everyone."
"A key part of that vision is building incredible AI-enabled wearables," Siroker wrote. "We share this vision and we'll be joining Meta to help bring our shared vision to life."
Limitless didn't start as a gadget maker. It began as a software play called "Rewind," a desktop tool that controversially recorded screen activity to create a searchable database of your digital life. The company later pivoted to the physical world with the Pendant, a clip-on Bluetooth microphone designed to record, transcribe, and summarize real-world audio. By absorbing this tech, Meta gains immediate expertise in the "always-listening" category of AI assistants—a segment that relies heavily on accurate audio transcription and summarization.
The Pendant is Dead (Long Live the Meta Pendant?)
For the early adopters who bought into the Limitless ecosystem, the news is a mixed bag. Limitless has killed sales of the wearable effective immediately.
The company isn't leaving existing users entirely in the cold, promising support "for at least another year." To soften the blow, the startup is stripping away its subscription paywall, giving current owners free access to premium features (though regional availability remains a patchwork).
Then there is the privacy elephant in the room. Limitless has opened pathways for users to export or delete their stored data if they want to jump ship. But handing an "always-listening" device technology to Meta—a company whose empire is built on mining user data for advertising—raises significant questions. While Limitless offers data deletion now, privacy advocates will be watching closely to see how this technology is integrated into Meta’s broader data-harvesting machine.
A Graveyard of Pins and Pendants
Meta’s interest in form factors beyond glasses acknowledges a harsh market reality: not everyone wants to wear a camera on their face. A clip-on offers a subtler alternative for ambient computing.
But this is a dangerous sector. The road to "screenless AI" is paved with expensive failures. The Limitless deal comes after a year that saw the spectacular implosion of the Humane AI Pin and the underwhelming debut of the Rabbit R1. Both devices promised to liberate us from smartphones but delivered frustrating user experiences and half-baked software. Limitless was different; it started as software and built hardware to support it, rather than the other way around. Meta likely sees value in that software-first DNA.
The sector is consolidating fast. In July 2025, Amazon scooped up Bee, another AI wearable startup, presumably to bolster its own ambient intelligence efforts.
The Limitless deal also follows closely on the heels of another major talent coup: Meta’s hiring of former Apple design lead Alan Dye. When you place the Limitless team alongside Dye’s arrival, the strategy sharpens. The future of Meta’s hardware ecosystem likely won't be a single "iPhone killer," but a constellation of AI-powered nodes—Ray-Ban smart glasses for your eyes and new clip-on peripherals for your body, all feeding data into the same "superintelligent" backend.