Rewind and Limitless: an AI memory app and pendant that ended in a Meta acquisition

What it is

Rewind was a Mac app that recorded text and audio passing through your screen and speakers, so you could search your history in natural language (9to5Mac). Its parent, Rewind AI, was renamed Limitless and released the Pendant, a necklace that recorded and transcribed conversations (9to5Mac).

Timeline

• ~2020: "When we started Limitless five years ago," wrote co-founder and CEO Dan Siroker in 2025 (Limitless).
• 2022: Rewind launches and gets attention for compression that could turn more than 10GB of recordings into a file smaller than 3MB (9to5Mac).
• Later: the company becomes Limitless AI and releases the Pendant (9to5Mac).
• 5 Dec 2025: Limitless announces it has been acquired by Meta. Pendant sales stop, and the service ends in Brazil, China, the EU, Israel, South Korea, Turkey and the UK (Limitless).
• 19 Dec 2025: Rewind's screen and audio capture is disabled, and users in the affected regions lose their data unless they downloaded it (Limitless).
• 2026: existing Pendant customers are supported through 2026 on a free Unlimited plan (Limitless).

Why it worked

As a path to an acquisition:

• A memorable technical hook. The compression claim made Rewind stand out at launch (9to5Mac).
• Timing. Siroker said that when they started, "AI was a pipe dream to many" and "Hardware startups were considered unfundable", but that AI wearables now "seem inevitable" (Limitless).
• Fit with a giant's plan. He tied the deal to Meta's vision of "personal superintelligence" and AI wearables (Limitless).

What to learn

1. If your product depends on recording everything, privacy is the product. 9to5Mac noted the "obvious privacy concerns" from the start (9to5Mac).
2. Pivots can be useful: the software app led to hardware, and the hardware led to the sale.
3. For users, an acquisition can mean the product disappears. Build export tools before you need them.

Risks and what didn't work

• The original product died. "We will be sunsetting non-Pendant functionality like Rewind" (Limitless).
• Regional cut-off. Users in seven markets lost the service on announcement day and had two weeks to export (9to5Mac).
• Hardware is hard. The Pendant stopped being sold to new customers on the day of the deal (Limitless).
• Revenue, user numbers and the deal price were not published in these sources.