Amazon acquires Bee, the AI wearables startup behind the smart wristband that organizes your life

As part of its further push into AI wearables and personal assistants, Amazon is acquiring Bee, a San Francisco-based startup best known for its $49.99 AI-powered wristband that listens to conversations and turns them into reminders, summaries, and to-do lists.

The deal, confirmed Tuesday by both companies, adds another layer to Amazon’s growing interest in consumer AI hardware, Bloomberg reported. Bee’s device may look like a simple Fitbit-style smartwatch, but it’s built to quietly process spoken interactions in the background—helping users keep track of their day without lifting a finger.

Bee CEO Maria de Lourdes Zollo announced the acquisition in a LinkedIn post, saying the startup was founded on a vision of making AI feel personal and supportive.

“When we started Bee, we imagined a world where AI is truly personal, where your life is understood and enhanced by technology that learns with you,” Zollo wrote in a LinkedIn post. “What began as a dream with an incredible team and community now finds a new home at Amazon.”

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the company’s plans to acquire Bee but declined to share the deal terms.

Amazon Is Buying the Wristband That Listens to Your Life: Acquires Bee AI to Reinvent Alexa on Your Arm

The acquisition adds to Amazon’s growing AI arsenal, which includes its Trainium chips, the Nova foundation models, and a chatbot-driven shopping assistant. It’s also been opening up its Bedrock platform for third-party developers. At the same time, the company has been reworking Alexa—originally launched over a decade ago—using generative AI, as it tries to stay competitive with platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

Bee isn’t Amazon’s first move in the wearable space. The company previously launched a fitness-focused product line called Halo, which it discontinued in 2023 during a broader cost review. But with Bee, Amazon is revisiting wearables through a new AI-first lens.

Other tech companies have also been experimenting with voice-driven or AI-powered devices. There’s the Rabbit R1, a compact AI gadget powered by OpenAI’s model, and Humane’s AI Pin, which was recently acquired by HP. Meta, meanwhile, has seen growing interest in its Ray-Ban smart glasses since their 2021 debut. And OpenAI itself made waves in May after acquiring Jony Ive’s startup, io, for a reported $6.4 billion. The company is said to be developing a screen-free device.

Amazon’s interest in Bee signals that the race to put AI on your wrist—or in your pocket—is far from over. And while the wristband may be small, the stakes in AI hardware are getting bigger by the day.