Legato exits stealth with $12M and AI hearing glasses due this fall

Hearing technology startup Legato emerged from stealth on Wednesday with $12 million in funding and a first look at its AI-powered hearing glasses, according to TechCrunch. The product, called Legato Frames, builds hearing-assistance technology into the arms of a pair of eyewear frames and is expected to go on sale later this fall.

What the glasses do

Legato Frames take a different approach from conventional hearing aids, which typically rely on directional microphones to focus on sound from a particular direction. That works reasonably well in quiet settings but tends to break down in noisy places like restaurants. Legato instead uses an AI system that distinguishes between background noise and voices and amplifies only the voices, with the stated aim of making conversations clearer without the mentally fatiguing listening experience that some traditional hearing aids can produce.

The frames use an open-ear design, but the company says sound is not broadcast to people nearby. A dual-speaker setup directs audio toward the wearer while cancelling sound that escapes, cutting it by 99% just a few inches from the ear, TechCrunch reports.

Co-founder Mehul Trivedi told TechCrunch that the design goal was a discreet product that looks and feels like ordinary glasses, with essentially no controls to adjust, minimal configuration, and all-day use. To make the hardware small and light, the company developed its own acoustic system, signal-processing stack and mechanical architecture.

Founders with Bose and Meta Ray-Ban roots

Legato was founded in late 2024 by Trivedi and Steve Romine, who previously worked together at Bose. Trivedi led the creation of Bose Frames there before moving to EssilorLuxottica, where he headed smart eyewear efforts and worked on the Meta Ray-Bans. Romine ran Bose's hearing aids division and later served as COO of hearing care company Audicus. According to TechCrunch, Trivedi spent time after leaving EssilorLuxottica exploring the intersection of hearing technology and smart eyewear, found technology he believed could merge the two, and contacted Romine to start the company.

The $12 million round came from Neotribe Ventures, Listen and Village Global, and has mostly gone toward product development and marketing.

Targeting a mostly untreated population

The company is aiming at people with mild to moderate hearing loss, which it says is the largest segment of the hearing-loss population. TechCrunch reports that hearing loss affects an estimated 50 million adults in the United States, yet only around 20% of those with a diagnosed hearing loss seek treatment. Legato's founding premise is that cost, comfort and stigma are the main barriers, and that glasses are a more familiar and socially neutral form factor than a hearing aid.

When the frames launch, they will be sold through select eye-care providers nationwide. Legato says they will cost a fraction of traditional hearing aids and may be eligible for vision insurance when purchased through an eye-care clinic, which would further lower the out-of-pocket price compared with hearing aids, which are often paid for out of pocket.

Why it matters

Legato is betting that the route to the roughly 80% of diagnosed hearing-loss patients who go untreated runs through the optometrist's office rather than the audiologist's. If the product works as described, the combination of a normal-looking form factor, a voice-isolating AI system and vision-insurance coverage could lower several barriers at once: stigma, price and the clinic visit itself.

The startup also frames the stakes as broader than convenience. Trivedi told TechCrunch that better hearing is fundamentally about connection, and linked untreated hearing loss to elevated dementia and depression risk, claims he attributes to hearing health research. Those benefits are asserted by the founder rather than independently verified for this product, and the glasses have not yet shipped.

The open questions are the familiar ones for a stealth-stage hardware company: real-world performance in noisy environments, battery life for what Trivedi describes as a roughly 16-hour-a-day device, and price once actual figures are announced. But with ex-Bose, EssilorLuxottica and Audicus leadership and funding in place, Legato is a credible entrant in a market where over-the-counter hearing aids have so far struggled with the exact stigma and usability problems these glasses are designed to sidestep.