Nirva, a startup founded in 2025, announced a $25 million pre-Series A round on Thursday, bringing its total funding to $33 million after an $8 million raise earlier in the year from investors including Lightspeed and South Park Commons. The company is building a jewelry-like pendant designed to listen only to its wearer, joining a crowded ambient AI field that has drawn Amazon, Apple and a wave of startups.
The pendant, which can also be worn as a bracelet, weighs about eight grams and runs up to three days on a single charge, according to the company. Nirva was founded by Wei Lyu and Jason Chen, both former Meta Reality Labs employees, along with Hanying Hu, who previously founded a fashion and jewelry brand. Lyu serves as CEO.
Nirva's pitch centers on privacy. Users record voice samples during onboarding, and the device uses that model to filter out speech and data from other people nearby, so it captures only the wearer, the company said. By default, Nirva does not retain audio or transcripts after processing. The approach differs from devices such as the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which have raised concerns among bystanders about being recorded.
Lyu said the product is meant to blend in as fashion while providing personal value, and she distinguished it from voice recorders, meeting note takers and rival wearables such as Taya, Vocci and Sandbar Ring, noting that Nirva listens passively and continuously to the user's own speech. Before discarding audio, the device tracks tone, pitch, volume and speed to derive emotion-related insights that appear in a companion app.
Nirva describes itself as a personal insights company rather than a productivity startup, though its app surfaces reminders and action items. The app parses speech to generate observations about the user's personality, including patterns, the people around them and places they have been, with emphasis on emotions and communication style, according to Lyu. She said the company aims to help people improve self-understanding, self-compassion and self-awareness, and described an occasion when the app reminded her to thank her mother for something she had forgotten.
Orders open in November, with the company aiming to ship to early users by the end of the year. The device is priced at $249 and will come in silver, brushed silver, black and gold. Nirva faces competition from Taya, founded by former Apple employees, as well as companion-gadget startups Friend and Bee, alongside Amazon's Bee wrist device and Apple's Voice Intelligence features launched with its September iPhone lineup.
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