As the ongoing race toward artificial general intelligence continues, several tech giants are looking to cash in on the market for AI-powered, personalized wearables, following the wild popularity of health-tracking devices like Oura Ring and Whoop. In fact, with OpenAI’s recent announcement that it has purchased Jony Ive’s AI device startup, we are bound to see more tech giants follow suit as demand for wearables grows.
Image credit: Above
However, as we wait for the next wave of devices from the tech’s key players, there is already a cohort of AI startups whose wearables provide users with unique differentiators that are already winning over consumers.
One such device is Above, which it’s worn as a minimalist necklace that looks more like jewelry than hardware. Rather than counting your steps or monitoring your sleep habits, Above is designed to help you be more present and gain a deeper understanding of how your mind works, so you can show up as the best version of yourself in your career, creativity, and personal relationships.
Instead of acting as an all-purpose chatbot or meeting recorder, Above is designed to be worn throughout the day, picking up ambient conversation and vocal patterns, analyzing tone, cadence, and affect in real time. It helps users identify speech habits (like overusing filler words or frequency of hesitation) and analyze how they come across in high-stakes moments.Then, acting much like a mentor or life coach would, it offers reflections designed to help you lead better, connect more clearly, and become more emotionally attuned.
And while the idea of a device listening to you as you move throughout your day may raise questions about data privacy for some, Above has made it a key pillar of their mission to treat all data with integrity–meaning that it’s fully encrypted, locally stored, and never sold to a third party.
In a world saturated with AI assistants focused on productivity and task automation, Above is carving out an entirely new use case for wearables: reflective intelligence that helps improve your emotional quotient over time.
Unlike many AI tools that require prompts, screens, or scheduled check-ins, Above operates in the background, learning about you as it listens, so that its feedback can evolve over time. That feedback then appears in a companion app, where users can view daily summaries of how they communicated, which “guide” (relationship coach, business coach, speech coach, or therapist-style feedback) was most active, and what patterns are emerging over time.
“Most people don’t realize how much their voice reveals,” says founder Lyle Maxson, who previously led immersive wellness ventures and developed therapeutics at the intersection of sound and cognition. “Above isn’t here to automate your life. It’s here to help you grow.”
The idea first took shape on a trip to the Arctic Circle, where Maxson joined a ship full of entrepreneurs for ten days of workshops, reflection, and late-night conversations under the polar sky. He wore a hacked-together prototype of the necklace each day of the trip, using it to capture conversations, meditative thoughts, and real-time feedback during group sessions.
What began as a personal experiment quickly became a catalyst for deeper connections, and constant curiosity from others on board who wanted a device for themselves. The experience convinced Maxson that this wasn’t just a tool for himself, but one he could scale for the masses.
Today, Above is shipping its first 1,000 units, built in Arizona, with early adopters ranging from surgeons to startup founders, executive coaches to podcasters.
Early adopters say it’s already saving them hours of mental load each day. According to user insights from the company, one executive coach uses it to prepare clients for difficult conversations, analyzing their tone and pacing from previous sessions to help shape more intentional communication strategies. Another CEO reviews his meeting summaries to assess how confidently and clearly he spoke when pitching investors, using Above’s feedback to adjust his delivery. A mother of three tracks patterns in how she communicates during stressful moments at home, using those insights to pause, reframe, and model calmer interactions with her children.
Above specializes in something fundamental and overlooked: how we sound, how we connect, and how we come across to others. Its utility extends beyond general-purpose intelligence. Above doesn’t just hear what you said–it listens to how you said it.
And that, Maxson argues, is the real frontier: moving beyond building intelligence that simply mimics humans, and building intelligence that helps us reconnect with and unlock insights into our own humanity.
“This isn’t about building a smarter assistant,” he says. “It’s about building a wiser mirror.”
