An eight-gram pendant that hears only the person wearing it has now drawn $33M in backing.
Nirva, founded in 2025 by Wei Lyu and Jason Chen out of Meta’s Reality Labs along with fashion entrepreneur Hanying Hu, closed a $25M pre-Series A on top of $8M raised earlier in the year. Lightspeed and South Park Commons were among the earlier backers.
The device, which doubles as a bracelet, runs up to three days per charge and goes on sale in November at $249 in silver, brushed silver, black and gold. Shipments to early buyers are slated for year end.
The filtering is the product
Ambient recorders have an obvious problem: everyone nearby is captured too. Nirva’s answer is a voiceprint built during onboarding, then used at runtime to discard other voices and background conversation. Audio and transcripts are dropped once processed, though tone, pitch, volume and speed are retained to infer emotional state.
That positions it against Taya, Friend, Bee and a wave of companion hardware, most of which pitch productivity. Nirva argues it is a self-knowledge tool instead, surfacing patterns in how someone speaks, who they spend time with and what they keep putting off. Chief executive Lyu describes a nudge the app sent after she forgot to thank her mother.
The bet is that buyers will accept an always-on microphone if the raw recording never persists and the filtering works. Its commercial test arrives with the first orders next month.
