Friend, the AI companion necklace from founder Avi Schiffmann, relaunched Thursday as Friend 2.0 with a built-in speaker and a $249 retail price — 2.5x the $99 sticker the original wore two years ago. The pitch remains what it was at launch: a wearable meant to combat loneliness by chatting with its owner throughout the day. The upgrade is that it now talks back out loud.
The device pairs a physical pendant with an always-on conversational AI tuned to project a single, consistent personality. Where the first Friend nudged users via text messages, the new version replies through the speaker itself, positioning the necklace closer to a talking companion than a phone accessory.
“Introducing friend 2.0”— Avi Schiffmann, Founder of Friend
A promotional video released alongside the launch shows a woman confiding in her Friend about what appears to be a past girlfriend, with the necklace responding, "It's not bad to be gay." A second scene features a man on a hillside being told, "That last film you made was insane!" The clips lean hard on emotional affirmation as the core use case.
Key facts
- 01Friend 2.0 launched Thursday at $249, up from the $99 price tag when the wearable first debuted two years ago.
- 02The new hardware adds a built-in speaker that gives the necklace a consistent voice and personality.
- 03Founder Avi Schiffmann describes the product as a 'confidant, friend, God' — explicitly not an assistant and not a lover.
- 04Humane Inc., the closest analog with its AI pin, shut down in under a year after poor sales.
- 05Friend's 2024 New York subway billboard campaign went viral after commuters repeatedly defaced the ads.
What Friend actually does beyond that remains loosely defined. There is no productivity layer, no calendar hooks, no assistant framing. Schiffmann has been explicit that the product is not trying to compete with an AI assistant, and he has publicly rejected the framing that it is meant as a romantic companion either.
In a recent post on X, Schiffmann described the intended relationship in unusual terms for a consumer hardware product. Marketing a plastic, algorithm-driven pendant as a possible deity is unconventional positioning even by AI-hardware standards, and it signals that Friend is aimed at buyers looking for something closer to a parasocial artifact than a gadget.
The company has courted attention before. Its 2024 billboard campaign across the New York City subway system went viral after the ads were repeatedly defaced by commuters who read the product as a replacement for human relationships. The controversy became, effectively, the launch campaign.
The commercial context is unforgiving. Humane Inc., which pursued the closest analog product with an AI pin meant to displace the iPhone, shut down in less than a year after weak sales. Rabbit's R1 struggled to hold user attention past the first few weeks. Most standalone AI wearables have failed to convert curiosity into daily use, and the category has yet to produce a mainstream hit.
Friend 2.0's higher price complicates that path. At $249, the pendant now sits in a bracket where buyers typically expect either meaningful utility or premium hardware craftsmanship, and Friend is explicitly not selling the former. The bet is that a distinct personality and a novel emotional value proposition can justify the markup where feature-rich rivals could not.
There is also the durability question the category has not solved. A companion product depends on the AI holding a coherent persona over months of conversation without drifting, contradicting itself, or producing the kind of jarring response that breaks the illusion. None of the surviving AI wearables have demonstrated they can do that at scale, and Friend has not published metrics on retention or session length from the original hardware.
The interesting read on Friend 2.0 is less about whether it succeeds commercially and more about what it reveals about the AI-hardware thesis. Schiffmann is testing whether emotional utility alone — companionship, affirmation, something to talk to — can carry a device without the productivity scaffolding that the assistant category leans on. If it works even at niche scale, it validates a distinct product wedge that OpenAI's rumored Jony Ive device and Meta's smart-glasses roadmap have so far avoided. If it doesn't, it will be the second high-profile confirmation, after Humane, that consumers still want their AI attached to a screen they already own.
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