Pre-seed · 2026

Press once. chit handles the rest.

The AI-native voice layer for the real economy.

invest.hichit.com · Shafay + Ahmad · ahmad@hichit.com

Why now

AI-native devices are the next platform.

The money already agrees.

OpenAI

Confirmed it is building “a family of devices” for its AI — Brockman, July 2026, on top of the $6.5B Jony Ive io acquisition. First unveil targeted for late 2026. The Next Web · Jul 2026

Amazon

Acquired Bee, the always-listening AI wearable, in July 2025. TechCrunch · Jul 2025

Sandbar

Raised a $23M Series A — March 2026, Adjacent + Kindred, $36M total — for Stream, a voice ring still in preorder. TechCrunch · Mar 2026

Plaud

Reported at a ~$2B valuation — a report both Plaud and Tencent deny — with revenue reported roughly tripling in 2025 off ~$56M in 2024, per 36Kr sources. 36Kr · May 2026

Voice is becoming the primary interface to AI — and every funded player is building it for the same customer: the desk worker in meetings.

The problem

~2.7 billion people work away from a desk.

Their quotes, jobs, expenses and promises live in conversations that vanish the second they end.

• Roughly 80% of the global workforce is deskless — Emergence Capital's canonical figure, and the market desk software has ignored for a decade.
• For 1099 and trade workers, an uncaptured conversation is lost money: missed billables, forgotten deductions, dropped follow-ups.
• The meeting-transcription stack — Otter, Zoom AI, Plaud — assumes a calendar, a desk and a laptop. These workers have none of the three.

Sources: Emergence Capital — deskless workforce

The solution

Press once. Talk. The work is done.

chit is a card-sized AI-native device and service: press once, talk, and chit turns what was said into records, expenses and next steps — interpreted through who you are and what you do.

chit is a service delivered through a device — not a device with an app.

01

Zero-friction capture

One press on a wallet-thin machined-aluminum card. No phone out, no app open, works mid-job.

02

A context engine, not a transcriber

chit learns who you are and what you do at first open — the same sentence becomes a quote for a roofer, a lead for an agent, an expense for a driver.

03

Output is work done

End-of-day summaries, logged expenses, calendar events and follow-ups pushed into the tools already in use.

The prototype

Designed, engineered, and headed to production.

• Two SKUs in production artwork

  Factory tooling files, July 2026: chit one Pro — machined aluminum, OLED status strip, single control button, faceted face — and chit one, the 3.9mm-thin sibling.

• App flow live in prototype

  Record → context-framed summary → connections (calendar, follow-ups) → daily recap of what you accomplished.

• Model-agnostic by design

  Transcription on Deepgram today; the architecture is BYOM — bring your own model — so enterprises can swap in their own.

• Hero product film in production

  The site already runs the first cut at hichit.com.

Team

We sell AI to the Fortune 500 by day — and run blue-collar businesses ourselves.

Shafay Ahmed

Co-founder · GitHub (Microsoft) · Georgia Tech CS

Senior Solutions Engineer at GitHub: enterprise strategic accounts across Copilot, Advanced Security and Agent HQ. Serial builder — Keelway (freight TMS), TestDrivePro (dealership SaaS with paying customers), and operator of an independent car dealership: the exact customer chit serves.

Ahmad Agad

Co-founder · Keelway · Georgia Tech

Co-founder of Keelway; runs Triple C, a carrier operation with over a hundred trucks — inside trucking, one of chit's launch verticals, every day.

Founder–market fit isn't a slide claim here. We are the ICP.

The vision

Every deskless worker gets an AI chief of staff that hears their day.

Every company gets a live picture of the work as it actually happens.

Personal

Purchaser-set context powers in-app Q&A and next-step tracking over everything captured.

Enterprise

Per-company customized apps, data residency in the customer's own VPC, end-of-day summaries for employees, call-volume and sentiment signals for managers.

Who we build for

• HVAC + plumbing operators
• Trucking fleets
• Dealerships + real estate
• 1099 / small business owners
• Schools

The market · 1 of 2

The deskless majority is the largest unserved market in AI.

~2.7B

deskless workers worldwide — about 80% of the global workforce

• ≈32M serviceable US seats across six segments, counted bottom-up from BLS May 2025, AAMC, NCES and NSF data — self-employed excluded, so trades run higher.
• AI meeting-assistant software: $3.47B (2025) → $21.5B (2033) projected. Analyst estimate — discount accordingly.
• 407.6M hearable units forecast to ship in 2026 — the voice-first hardware wave is already at scale.

Sources: BLS OEWS · May 2025 · Grand View · IDC · 2026

The market · 2 of 2

Beachhead: US trades, trucking, and 1099 workers.

Price anchors: Sandbar Stream is $249–299 + $10/mo. Plaud runs $159–189 + $8.33–$19.99/mo across tiers. chit undercuts on the device — $129, $179 Pro — and simplifies the service to one $9 plan.

Sources: BLS OEWS · May 2025 · TechCrunch · Jun 2026 — ~50% attach · Sandbar pricing · Plaud pricing

Go to market

Wedge: expense capture. Channel: rev-share partners, not ads.

The wedge

Expense and quote capture has immediate, countable ROI — found deductions and billables pay for the device in weeks. Then chit expands to the whole workday.

The channel

Launch-phase revenue-share partnerships: organizations get discounted devices in exchange for rev share. Conversations targeted in schools, HVAC, plumbing and trucking, driven by a per-industry use-case matrix.

Market insights

• DTC hardware CAC is brutal. Rev-share channels turn distribution into allies with built-in trust — and cost nothing until they sell.
• Every funded competitor is fighting over the same meeting-heavy knowledge worker. The deskless majority has no incumbent.
• Vertical context packs — per-industry onboarding and integrations — make each channel win compound into product advantage.

Traction

Built, shipping, and signed.

• Deployed

  20 co-branded devices live in Flexbone's VPC today — specified and branded as Flexbone's own, committed before any outside capital. Their CEO takes reference calls.

• Hardware

  Two SKUs in production artwork with the factory; units produced.

• Software

  App flow live in prototype — record, context-framed summary, connections, daily recap.

• Commerce

  hichit.com and buychit.com run a real Stripe checkout — device plus membership, verified end to end in sandbox. Live payments switch on when we claim the resource.

• Demand

  Four signed, non-binding LOIs — healthcare AI, logistics, automotive, HVAC — against 285 units of stated interest. 200 of those are Flexbone's rollout, contingent on this round funding it; the logistics letter is a related party: a founder owns the carrier.

• Revenue

  $0 today. Revenue starts when production run #1 ships against the LOIs — this round funds that run.

• Waitlist

  waitlist and preorder counts from hichit.com, pulled the week this is sent. If it is zero, say zero.

Competition

Everyone else is building for the desk.

The plan

From tooling to trades in 12 months.

Q3 2026

Production run #1 · hero film · raise closes

Q4 2026

Launch: DTC via hichit.com + first 3 rev-share channel pilots live

H1 2027

Enterprise pilots — per-company apps, VPC deployments; attach measured against Plaud's reported ~50%

H2 2027

Scale the winning verticals; seed raise or profitability