Nirva raises $25 million to build AI jewelry that listens and offers insights

Personal artificial intelligence wearable company Nirva Labs today announced it has raised $25 million in early funding to accelerate development of its sleek AI jewelry, which brings emotional perspective to users.

The company is backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, South Park Commons and others. Today’s round brings Nirva’s total funding to $33 million, following an $8 million seed round.

Nirva’s first product will be AI-powered jewelry, a necklace or a bracelet intended to journal a user’s day automatically, identify patterns in moods and relationships and provide advice through a companion app. The necklace is sleek and attractive, small enough to fit along the neck or wrist with tailored clothing, and housed in sleek silver, gold, onyx and other casings with a minimal design.

The central pitch is an AI assistant that becomes more useful by observing everyday life, rather than relying only on users typing or calling upon it as a chatbot. Instead, they use it for useful insights and relationship advice.

“Ten years in wearables taught me the drawer is where most of the industry’s ambition goes to die,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Wei Lyu. “So, we set a rule for every generation of hardware: with a dead battery, it should still be a beautiful piece of jewelry, But we’re not selling a device. We’re selling self-understanding.”

This pivots away from much of the AI wearables industry, which relies heavily on boosting user productivity. These include AI necklaces, pendants, watches and bracelets that listen in on conversations to transcribe or react to wake words in order to light up and answer questions only when needed.

Instead, Nirva is a therapeutic journaling tool that reflects back on the user’s life to give them an idea about what shaped their day.

Lyu gave an example of what it notices. “I was dog-sitting for a friend and accidentally closed a door on the puppy’s paw. I kept asking if it was OK, and pretty quickly slid into guilt,” he said. “I never told Nirva what had happened, but it heard enough. Later it pointed out how quickly I moved into self-blame. I wouldn’t have caught that on my own, and I’ve caught it several times since.”

The AI in the wearable connects to a companion app on a mobile device and shares these insights with the user. Rather than recording the people around the user, it primarily recognizes the user’s voice and, with the user’s permission, can pull from a user’s calendar, location and Apple Health to better understand their day.

Orders open in November, with pricing expected at $249. The first pieces are expected to ship by the end of the year.

The global AI wearable market is valued at around $55.7 billion in 2026, reported by market research firm Grand View Research and is projected to reach 310.6 billion by 2033. Enterprise adoption dominates the market and it is largely fueled by augmented reality devices, with an increased demand for health monitoring and fitness tracking.

But there is a rising interest in AI-powered wearable devices. For example, productivity and “listening” devices are gaining traction, though Nirva’s model diverges from the current trend of direct assistants.

The funding is expected to take the company through launch and will help it iterate through the next generations of hardware. The company currently has a team of roughly 20 and is hiring engineers to build the personal AI jewelry, along with product designers and marketers in San Francisco.

Images: Nirva