Muse Charm vs OpenAI's secret device: who leads the AI gadget race

Sep 25, 2026 · 5 min read

For more than a year, the AI device people were waiting for belonged to OpenAI. The company bought io, Jony Ive's hardware startup, for about $6.5 billion in May 2025, and Sam Altman has described something calmer than a phone and more aware of what is going on around you. Then, on 23 September 2026, Meta walked on stage first with Muse Charm.

Charm is a palm-sized device for Meta's Muse agent, and Meta says it ships in December. OpenAI's device has no public name and no price, and according to OpenAI's own court filing it cannot reach customers before the end of February 2027. Here is how the two compare, with what is confirmed kept apart from what is only reported.

What has Meta shown?

Muse Charm has a touchscreen of about two inches that shows your agent as a character, front and rear cameras so Muse can see what you point it at, speakers, microphones, 5G and a fingerprint sensor you press to start talking. It sets up through the Muse app on iPhone or Android. Meta has not announced a price; 9to5Mac reported it will cost roughly what a smartwatch does.

It came from Meta's new design lab under Alan Dye, formerly Apple's interface design chief. Zuckerberg admitted that the internal layout of the components was not final yet, so the December date carries some risk. Still, it is a date, given in public, by the company that has to meet it.

What has OpenAI confirmed?

Very little, officially. OpenAI has confirmed the io acquisition and that Ive's team now leads its hardware work. In a February 2026 court filing in a trademark dispute with iyO, a hearing-device startup, OpenAI said its first device would not ship to customers before the end of February 2027 and that it would not use the name io.

Fortune reported in July that the hardware group had grown past 400 people. The same report covered a lawsuit from Apple alleging that former Apple staff took trade secrets to OpenAI. OpenAI's response was that it believes in fair competition and in people's freedom to change jobs.

What is still only rumour?

The form of OpenAI's device has never been described officially. In January, TechCrunch relayed reports of earbuds code-named Sweet Pea. In July, reporting cited by Fortune and 9to5Mac described something closer to a home speaker with a camera. OpenAI president Greg Brockman has said the company is building a family of devices, and asked about a screen, he would not rule one in or out.

So the honest comparison today is a product with specs and a ship month against a project with a floor on its ship date and several possible shapes.

Why does moving first matter here?

Launching first rarely settles a hardware category, but Meta starts with three advantages. It has an agent people already use: Muse passed 2.5 million downloads within weeks of launch, according to Sensor Tower data reported by CNN. It has distribution, because Muse already lives inside WhatsApp and its own app. And it already ships hardware at scale through its Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

OpenAI's advantages are the reach of ChatGPT, which far more people use than Muse, and Ive's record at Apple. If its device arrives in 2027 with a clear reason to exist, a few months of delay may matter less than it looks today.

What problem do both devices have to solve?

The last wave of AI gadgets did not survive contact with buyers. Humane's AI Pin launched in 2024 at $699 plus a monthly fee; in February 2025 HP bought most of Humane's assets for $116 million and the pins stopped working. The Rabbit R1, a $199 handheld from the same year, was widely reviewed as doing little that a phone app could not.

Both devices failed the same test: why carry this instead of using the phone you already have? Charm's answer is speed, a camera that sees what you see, and an agent that can finish tasks inside your accounts, which the 2024 devices could not reliably do. OpenAI has not yet given its answer in public.

What would make either one worth carrying?

Reviews will settle this, not keynotes. When the first hands-on tests appear, these are the questions worth asking of both devices.

• Does it finish a real task faster than your phone does, counting from pocket to done?
• What do the cameras record, where is it stored, and can the people around you tell when it is on?
• What does it cost in total, including any mobile plan or subscription it needs?
• Does it work where you live? Muse is available only in the United States and Canada today.
• What happens to the device if the company changes course? Humane's owners were left holding pins that no longer worked.

A device that clears all five earns a place in your pocket. One that clears only the first two is a clever demo.

What does this mean beyond gadgets?

Whichever company wins, both are betting on the same habit: talking to an AI out loud, often, without a keyboard. That reaches well beyond gadget sales. At AI Interview Agents we run interviews as spoken conversations with an AI, and the more people speak to an agent in daily life, the less unusual a voice interview will feel to the candidate taking one.