With artificial intelligence being so prevalent across, well, just about everything these days, it’s no small feat for AI developers to make their products stand out among the deluge. Very few have managed to capture as much attention as Rabbit, the AI startup that’s managed to sell 40,000 units of its standalone $199 R1 gadget within eight days of launching the device at CES in January this year.
The AI-powered Rabbit OS behind the Rabbit R1 is essentially a dedicated virtual assistant that’s designed to interact with your favorite apps like a kind of universal controller. The OS is built upon a “Large Action Model” trained to interact with common apps like Spotify and Uber to get things done; from sending messages, controlling music, making online purchases, and more.
At around half the size of an iPhone, the orange Rabbit R1 gadget was designed in collaboration with Teenage Engineering, and features a 2.88-inch touchscreen, a scrolling navigation wheel, and a rotating camera. It’s a little reminiscent of the Playdate handheld game console.
We’re keeping track of all the latest updates surrounding the Rabbit R1’s launch below so that nothing gets buried in the hype — providing the device lives up to its sizable expectations.
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What’s Rabbit working on with Perplexity AI?
Perplexity AI, a company that uses generative AI for search, will co-announce something it’s working on with Rabbit, the company behind the fast-selling Rabbit R1 AI not-a-phone gadget, tomorrow at 2PM PT / 5PM ET.
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Image: Alex Parkin / The VergeThe best gadgets at CES are the ones you’d never see coming. Not the iterative updates, where everything gets a little brighter and a little faster but nothing fundamentally changes. No, we like the E Ink toilets and the crab-walking cars and the rolling projectors that show you what’s inside your fridge. Do you need all these things? Does anyone? Will they ever go on sale? Who knows?! That’s the fun of CES.
On this episode of The Vergecast, recorded from the Kia Connected Home right in the middle of the Las Vegas Convention Center parking lot, we discuss all the most important gadget stories from this year’s show. We talk about the Rabbit R1, which was easily the surprise hit of the show. We discuss Ballie, Samsung’s adorable robot companion, and the tough week it had giving demos. We talk Qi2 and Wi-Fi 7 and the other standards shaping the future of gadgets. And finally, we talk about the future of cars, and what it means that the inside of the car suddenly seems to matter way more than the outside.
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The Rabbit R1 is selling quick as a bunny.
The company announced it sold out of its second round of 10,000 devices, 24 hours after the first batch sold out and barely 48 since it launched to the world. Something about the mix of ambitious AI, Teenage Engineering style, and that attainable $199 price just seems to be working for people.
The third batch is up for preorder now, but you won’t get your R1 until at least May.
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I don’t get the hype about the Rabbit R1.
10,000-plus people are already sold on the big AI hit of CES 2024, but I’m not there yet. My Android homescreen layout can tell you that I’m left-handed, which is just one of the issues raised by comments like this one.
The size probably isn’t bad (David Pierce has seen the R1, and says it’s not that much thicker than an iPhone), but the keynote didn’t convince me that this voice assistant is worth my time, or that allowing a “Large Action Model” access to my accounts is a good idea in terms of privacy or security.
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The Rabbit R1 is not a phone… but it’s not not a phone. Image: RabbitJesse Lyu, the CEO and founder of an AI startup called Rabbit, says he doesn’t want to replace your smartphone. At least not right away. His company’s new gadget, a $199 standalone AI device called the R1, is so staggeringly ambitious that Lyu seems to think he can’t help but replace your phone at some point. Just not quite yet.
(Update January 10th, 4:45PM ET: Rabbit announced its initial 10,00 unit run of R1 units has already sold out, and now it’s taking pre-orders for a second shipment in the spring.)