Ambient AI is having a moment. Amazon launches a new wrist-worn device with Bee; a former Plaud exec launching ambient apps through a startup called Ambi, which also aims to build its own hardware; and Apple launched voice intelligence features during its iPhone launch in September. Now, a company called Nirva is betting on a jewel-like pendant and its ability to listen only to the wearer.
The startup today announced a new $25 million pre-Series A round, adding to the $8 million it raised earlier in the year from investors like Lightspeed and South Park Commons, bringing its total raised to $33 million.
Nirva was founded in 2025 by two former Meta Reality Labs employees, Wei Lyu and Jason Chen, along with Hanying Hu, who founded a fashion and jewelry brand.
The company’s first device is a pendant that can also be worn as a bracelet. The device weighs only about eight grams, making it easy to carry around all day. Its battery lasts up to three days on a single charge.
Longer term, Nirva aims to release more devices.
In a call with TechCrunch, Nirva CEO Lyu said the company wanted to build a wearable that blends with fashion but also provides value to users.
“This is a gem that only focuses on listening to your own speech. We are not like a voice recorder or like a meeting notes. One key difference between us, Taya, Vocci or Sandbar Ring is that we always passively listen to your own speech. So it is always on.
For ambient devices, privacy is a big issue because people may not like being recorded all the time. Plus, devices like the Ray-Ban Meta have fear in the people who are around the person who wears the smart glasses, that they will also be recorded.
Nirva gets around this problem by asking users to record snippets of their voice during onboarding and building its model based on that. During use, the device filters conversations or captures data from other people around the device. This means that only the bearer is recorded.
In addition, by default, Nirva does not retain any audio data or transcripts after processing the conversations.
Nirva positions itself as a personal insights company rather than a productivity startup. However, its app shows you reminders or action items and ways to act on them. Lyu said that through its app, the startup will help users to show others a better way in their lives.
“I think there is no universal way to help everyone solve their problems. We are building a tool to help people improve their self-understanding, self-compassion and self-awareness,” said Lyu.
The companion app parses users’ speech and creates insights that it infers are related to the user’s personality, including patterns, the people who tend to be around them, the places they’ve been, and other daily notes. Lyu emphasized that the app shows users insights about their emotions, communication style and ways they can improve.
Lyu gave an example of an incident when she forgot to thank her mother for something, and the app later prompted her with a reminder about it.
The company also said that, before releasing the audio, it is able to track the tone, pitch, volume and speed, which are useful to get emotion-related understanding, which then appeared in the app.
Nirva will begin taking orders for its devices in November, with the goal of shipping them to early adopters by the end of the year. The $249 device is available in silver, brushed silver, black and gold.
The startup has competition in the AI wearables field. There are companies like former Apple employee Taya, which also builds smart jewelry. Plus, startups like Friend and Bee are also trying to be companion gadgets.
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