# Nirva secures $33 million to ship an eight-gram ambient AI pendant that isolates only the wearer’s voice

Founded by former Meta Reality Labs engineers, the startup pairs directional acoustic beamforming with jewelry aesthetics, delivering three-day battery life for $249.

- Canonical: https://reviewblip.com/news/nirva-secures-33-million-to-ship-an-eight-gram-ambient-ai-pendant-that-isolates-only-the-wearers-voice/
- Published: 2026-10-22T23:23:58.581Z
- Updated: 2026-10-22T23:23:58.581Z
- Author: ReviewBlip
- Category: Audio & Ambient Computing
- Type: News

![Nirva ambient AI pendant hardware capsule crafted from brushed metallic alloy beside a beaded jewelry necklace chain](https://reviewblip.com/editorial-images/d1d86e357b5ebc1ffb773d5c6d0808276ac2651f4045b4d6572268f9e75583a8)

Image credit: Nirva / TechCrunch · Official product design and hardware reveal

Ambient hardware startup Nirva announced Thursday that it has closed a $25 million pre-Series A funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from South Park Commons, bringing its cumulative capital raised to $33 million. The funding will finance mass production of the company’s $249 ambient artificial intelligence pendant, scheduled to commence customer deliveries before the end of 2026.\[5\]

Nirva was co-founded by former Meta Reality Labs hardware leads Wei Lyu and Jason Chen alongside luxury jewelry designer Hanying Hu. Weighing only eight grams, the cylindrical brushed alloy capsule can be worn as a discreet necklace pendant or wrapped around the wrist as a bracelet. Despite its diminutive form factor, the device integrates an energy-efficient acoustic processor delivering up to three days of continuous operation on a single wireless charge.\[5\]

To address pervasive privacy concerns surrounding ambient audio recorders, Nirva engineered a directional beamforming acoustic array that isolates the wearer's vocal cord vibrations and bone-conducted resonance while actively discarding third-party speech and surrounding room noise. CEO Wei Lyu confirmed that conversations held in proximity to the user are mathematically scrubbed on-device prior to local transcription, preventing the unintentional capture of bystanders without consent.\[5\]

Our take: Ambient AI wearables like the Humane Ai Pin and Rabbit R1 suffered catastrophic market failures due to excessive weight, poor battery life, and socially awkward interactions. Nirva’s hardware engineering takes a markedly smarter direction: by stripping out cameras and screens, focusing exclusively on directional voice capture, and packaging the sensor in an eight-gram jewelry form factor, Nirva solves the physical ergonomics of ambient computing. However, convincing consumers to wear an active microphone all day will require verifiable proof that on-device privacy filtering cannot be bypassed via firmware updates.

## Sources
- [\[5\] Nirva Raises $33M to Ship 8-Gram Directional AI Wearable Pendant](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/22/nirva-raises-33m-for-a-pendant-that-only-listens-to-you/)