Pay Attention to Friend.com

The criticisms of friend.com have been mindless and, frankly, slightly stupid.

I have consistently said that the Apple iPhone (and likely Google Pixel) will be hard to beat in the budding AI hardware race. Between their built-in userbase, computing power + wireless airbud experience, and developing onboard AI assistants, these companies will be hard to leapfrog. I still stand by this.

Up until today, the many AI-based hardware attempts have been huge misses (Humane, Rabbit, etc). Too expensive, poor latency, unclear use cases, nerdy/niche branding, and generally not intuitive enough to weave into one's daily life.

However, I was pleasantly surprised with Avi Schiffmann's pre-release of friend.com. The clear consumer use case, spot-on branding, and the always-on companion functionality position it as a potential gamechanger in the AI hardware market. Priced at $99 for the first version, it's a very approachable and fair offering.

Humans love companionship. We love friends—especially ones that play an informative and supportive role in our lives. That's what good friends do, and this is a real, future-forward use case for AI. Finding the right way to capture this magic will be one of the many AI unlocks coming over the next decade.

I'm not sure how the true experience will turn out once the product ships, but the vision and execution are sound, and I am excited to see such thoughtful tech being released into the marketplace.