Will.i.am's wearable device startup I.am+ hires former Sony exec Phil Molyneux as President and COO
Nick Wingfield / New York Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
In 2015 I.am+ was best known as Will.i.am's wearable bet without a proven operator at its side; hiring Phil Molyneux, a former Sony consumer-electronics executive, as President and COO was the move to fix that. The hire preceded a rapid build-out: an Israeli machine-learning acquisition of Sensiya in 2016, a $117M raise alongside a customer-service voice assistant in 2017, and a pivot into smart home via Flex's Wink hub.
The arc matters because the company that professionalized around Molyneux still ended up in distress — by late 2019 sources reported staff going unpaid and Wink devices breaking. That trajectory is the reference point for the current wave of well-funded AI-device startups, from Humane's $100M raise to Jony Ive and Sam Altman reportedly seeking up to $1B.
First-order effects
- I.am+ gains a consumer-hardware operator from Sony at the top, directly addressing the gap between a celebrity founder's brand and the execution demands of shipping wearables.
Second-order effects
- With operational leadership in place, I.am+ shifts from selling its own branded accessories toward acquiring capability — Sensiya's machine learning, Wink's smart-home platform — and repositions around a voice-assistant business aimed at enterprise customer service.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, even professionally run celebrity-backed hardware startups struggle against platform economics: I.am+'s eventual payroll and product failures foreshadowed the same structural question now facing Humane and Ive/Altman — whether standalone AI wearables can sustain themselves outside Apple- or Google-scale ecosystems.
The trend: Celebrity- and star-founder-led AI hardware ventures keep raising large rounds on the promise of post-smartphone devices, while I.am+'s trajectory stands as the cautionary precedent they are measured against.