Only about 5 thousand people use the Rabbit R1 artificial intelligence wearable devices, which went on sale in early 2024, every day. Jesse Liu, the founder of the startup, told Fast Company about this in an interview.
The Rabbit R1 was first unveiled at CES 2024 in January 2024 and has since sold more than 100 thousand copies, and to Forbes, 130 thousand as of June. Accordingly, less than 5% of owners use the device.
Since its launch, the R1 has had a lot of problems, including security issues. The developers have already released 16 updates for the device, but this does not help to keep the audience active.
Jesse Liu says that the R1 is an interactive product, and that startups developing such devices need to see all the flaws and shortcomings in order to be able to fix them.
Liu even notes that he watches every review and every controversy about the Rabbit R1 on social media and YouTube to note down the flaws and fix them. He also noted that these bad reviews did not kill the startup, but 5 thousand active users hint at a clearly unsuccessful product launch.
Another similar startup, Humane, which released the Humane Ai Pin, a portable AI device, is also suffering from problems. In August, it was reported that Ai Pin was being returned more often than purchased, and before that, there were many more reports of problems, such as overheating with fire risks. And, of course, the device received a lot of negative feedback.