Nothing will ship its first AI device in December, and it is built for work. Chief executive Carl Pei announced it on Wednesday in a long essay on X. He gave no name, price or launch date.

“It’s a tool, but one built with the personality and care that have come to define a Nothing product. It has no new screen, and it couldn’t have been an app,” Pei wrote.

His only image shows the dark corner of a rounded device. It carries the words “Nothing (R)” and “Coming soon”.

No iPhone moment yet

Most of Pei’s essay argued against the hunt for a single breakthrough AI gadget.

“The whole industry is hunting for its iPhone moment: the pendant, the pin, the glasses, the companion, some magical consumer device that makes AI part of everyone’s life,” he wrote. “I admire the boldness, but I read this moment differently.”

Pei said new technology wins people over at work first. Computers spread as spreadsheet machines and mobile phones as car phones for dealmakers, he wrote. He said coding alone makes up more than half of what companies spend on AI built for specific jobs.

Pei wants to fix what he calls a “context gap”. AI models are capable, he wrote, but they know little about a person’s day. People still copy emails, calendars and Slack threads into a chat box, and they lose ideas from conversations.

“Close it, and everything AI can already do gets dramatically more useful,” Pei wrote.

Glean chief executive Arvind Jain also talked about giving AI more context about work on the TNW podcast in October.

Glasses in the rumour mill

Pei also argued that work tools should look as good as consumer ones, and pointed to Olivetti’s Valentine typewriter. Nothing makes phones and earbuds, and Pei wrote that “tens of millions” of its devices are in use.

Nothing first announced plans for “AI-native” devices about a year ago, The Verge noted. A report last month said it plans two pairs of AI smart glasses. Rivals already sell AI glasses, from Alibaba’s Qwen N1 to Meta’s Ray-Bans.