These glasses don't just help you see. They listen to the room and decide which voices to amplify.
Hearing tech startup Legato just emerged from stealth with $12M and its first product, "Legato Frames." Here's what makes it different, per TechCrunch's exclusive report.
The Problem It's Solving
"Hearing loss affects an estimated 50 million adults in the United States, but only around 20% of those with diagnosed hearing loss seek treatment." A big part of that gap is the stigma and stiffness of traditional hearing aid hardware -- which is exactly the problem Legato is betting its design solves.
How It Actually Works
Traditional hearing aids use directional microphones, which struggle in noisy places like restaurants. Instead, "Legato takes a different approach by using an AI-powered system to differentiate between background noise and voices, amplifying only the voices."
It Doesn't Leak Sound to Everyone Around You
The open-ear frames use "a dual-speaker system that directs sound toward the wearer while canceling sound that escapes, reducing sound by 99% just a few inches away from the ear."
The Design Goal
Co-founder Mehul Trivedi, who previously led Bose Frames, said: "So a form factor that's really discreet and looks normal. They're meant to feel and look like regular glasses." Trivedi's design instincts here come from a specific place: after Bose Frames, he moved to EssilorLuxottica, where he led smart eyewear efforts and worked directly on the Meta Ray-Bans -- glasses that already proved a tech-forward wearable could look genuinely normal on someone's face.
Who's Behind It
Legato was founded by Trivedi and Steve Romine, who ran Bose's hearing aids division and later served as COO of hearing care company Audicus, after both spent years separately working in wearables and hearing care. Trivedi put the mission simply: "Our goal is to make hearing as ubiquitous as vision." The $12 million seed round came from Neotribe Ventures, Listen, and Village Global.
When and How Much
The glasses are expected to launch this fall through eye-care providers, priced as "a fraction" of traditional hearing aids -- and notably, may qualify for vision insurance coverage, a category traditional hearing aids typically fall outside of entirely.