San Francisco, April 9, 2026, 12:02 PDT
- Button, built by former Apple Vision Pro engineers Chris Nolet and Ryan Burgoyne, is priced at $179 and is due to begin shipping to its first U.S. customers on Dec. 15. 1
- The startup says the device only listens when pressed, launches with iPhone support and includes three months of Button AI Pro before a $7.99 monthly fee. 1
- The pitch lands after Humane’s AI Pin collapse, with Rabbit and OpenAI still pushing AI-first hardware. 2
Former Apple Vision Pro engineers Chris Nolet and Ryan Burgoyne are selling a $179 clip-on AI device called Button that only listens when pressed and is built to answer spoken prompts quickly. The Y Combinator-backed gadget, which resembles an iPod Shuffle, is due to start shipping to its first U.S. customers on Dec. 15, 2026. 3
That matters because the AI hardware market is still looking for a hit. Humane shut down its AI Pin business and sold assets to HP for $116 million in 2025 after disappointing reviews and weak orders, while OpenAI and Rabbit are still pushing new AI-first devices in search of a form factor that sticks. 2
Button is being marketed as a companion to a phone or laptop, not a replacement. Company materials say it clips to clothing, answers through a built-in speaker or Bluetooth headphones, connects to the internet through a phone, and will support iPhone at launch, with Android coming later. 1
The price is low by the standards of recent AI gadgets, but the business model is not just the one-time hardware sale. Buyers get three months of Button AI Pro, after which the service costs $7.99 a month, though the company says users can also bring their own API key — a credential that links the device to outside AI services — instead of paying for the subscription. 1
Nolet and Burgoyne are listed by Y Combinator as former Apple engineers who worked on Vision Pro, with Nolet serving as founder and chief executive and Burgoyne as co-founder and chief technology officer. Nolet told Wired the privacy push grew out of an unsettling encounter, saying, “It really freaked me out,” after learning someone had recorded a conversation with a wearable. 4
Speed is the other part of the pitch. In their Y Combinator launch post, the founders wrote, “We’re obsessed with latency” — industry shorthand for the lag before a system replies — and said the device was designed to answer in about half a second; Wired reported seeing a demo response arrive in roughly a second. 4
The company is entering a field that already has better-known rivals. Rabbit’s r1 sells for $199 with no subscription and has been updated to act across a user’s computer, while Reuters reported in February that OpenAI had more than 200 people working on devices that may include a smart speaker and smart glasses. TechCrunch reported last month that Button plugs into tools such as email, Slack and Salesforce by voice, showing the founders are aiming at work tasks as much as casual questions. 5
But Button still has to answer the question that has shadowed nearly every AI gadget so far: why consumers should wear or carry one more device that still depends on a smartphone for connectivity. As IDC’s Francisco Jeronimo put it in January, success in wearables will depend less on hardware novelty and more on “ecosystem integration and software value.” 1
Nolet told Wired he is not trying to replace the iPhone, calling Button “a complementary device.” That may keep expectations lower than Humane’s ever were, but it also narrows the task in front of Button: prove a clipped-on shortcut to voice AI is useful enough to survive beyond the first round of demos. 3
