Omi bets open-source AI wearable is the 'second brain': $89 pendant, 13.4k GitHub stars

Based Hardware sells Omi, an $89 AI pendant plus app that records conversations, transcribes them, summarizes action items, and remembers context across desktop, phone and wearables.

That an open-source AI wearable built as a second brain that complements the phone, not replaces it, is the wearable people actually keep using daily.

~$700,000 raised, of which founder Nik Shevchenko spent $150,000 on promotional videos shot in Los Angeles (TechCrunch, January 2025)

Nik Shevchenko, a Thiel Fellow with a history of eye-grabbing stunts, first marketed the device on Kickstarter under the name Friend, then renamed it Omi after Avi Schiffmann's rival Friend launched and bought the Friend domain for $1.8 million. At CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Based Hardware announced Omi as a small round orb worn as a necklace — or taped to the temple using what the company called a 'brain interface' to tell when the user is talking to it, a capability TechCrunch noted it could not verify.

The consumer version cost $89 and started shipping in Q2 2025; a developer version sold for about $70. Omi listens continuously, runs conversations through GPT-4o, and remembers context for personalized advice. Shevchenko said he had raised roughly $700,000 and spent $150,000 of it on promotional videos, betting that attention itself improved an open-source product. GitHub growth followed the launch: the repo trended 9 days since March 2024 with a best all-languages rank of #2 on 2026-04-19, and held 13.4k stars by 2026-09-01. An April 2026 week-long field test by agency Imagination described the app as the real brain, praised its action-item extraction and plugin ecosystem, and noted Omi states it does not train models on conversations without consent.

Omi is still shipping and expanding: the fully open-source, MIT-licensed repo now spans a mobile app, macOS and Windows apps, firmware, and Omi Glass on ESP32-S3, and the README claims 300,000+ professionals as users as of 2026-09-02.

Framing Omi as a complement to the phone, not a replacement, sidesteps the expectation that sank Rabbit, Humane and Friend — users keep their phone and get a helper.

Open source converts the biggest objection to an always-listening device — privacy — into a distribution asset: code is inspectable and data can stay local.

A $89 price and a $70 developer kit lowered the entry barrier for both consumers and app developers, seeding a 250+-app store before mainstream shipping.

GitHub's repeated trending runs — best rank #2 on 2026-04-19, 13.4k stars by September 2026 — show developer pull compounding without paid marketing.

Open source is a credibility weapon for always-listening hardware: showing the code and letting users keep data local turns the privacy objection into a distribution advantage.

As of 2026-09-02 Omi is live and expanding: the MIT-licensed, fully open-source project covers mobile, desktop, firmware and Omi Glass, the README claims 300,000+ professionals, and the plugin ecosystem continues to grow through community-built apps. No revenue or valuation has been disclosed; the company remains small and venture-light, having launched on roughly $700K. Its open-source governance and device sales both depend on the always-listening pitch holding up as privacy scrutiny of AI wearables intensifies.