Meta buys AI wearables startup Limitless

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Meta has confirmed it is buying Limitless, a U.S. startup that makes a wearable pendant that records and summarizes conversations and meetings with the help of artificial intelligence.

Financial details of the deal to acquire the five-year-old Denver-based firm were not disclosed.

"We're excited that Limitless will be joining Meta to help accelerate our work to build AI-enabled wearables," a Meta spokesperson said in response to an AFP inquiry.

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has made AI a priority at the tech giant with a stated aim of achieving "superintelligence."

AI is being used to enhance Meta apps including Facebook and Instagram, and to ramp up capabilities of smartglasses it makes in partnership with EssilorLuxottica.

To pursue his AI ambitions, Zuckerberg has launched an aggressive recruitment campaign, attracting executives from OpenAI, Apple and Google with multibillion-dollar offers.

Meta invested heavily in Scale AI earlier this year, poaching the startup's co-founder Alexandr Wang as part of the deal and putting him in charge of a newly formed unit called Superintelligence Labs.

The deal to buy Limitless appears to be the first major acquisition by Meta since it finalized its buyout of virtual reality firm Within Unlimited in 2023, after a court rejected an attempt by US regulators to block the deal over competition concerns.

The courtroom loss was seen as a setback for then-FTC head Lina Khan, who was an advocate of imposing tougher scrutiny on Big Tech companies on antitrust matters.