Talk about a company pivot.
Napster Corp., the early 2000s startup that popularized peer-to-peer file sharing via digital audio distribution, has rechristened itself as an artificial intelligence (AI) company.
The company, acquired by immersive technology company Infinite Reality for $207 million in March, on Wednesday said it is diving into the field with large language model (LLM)-based assistants that replace text-based prompts with “natural, real-time video chat with embodied AI.”
Napster introduced two products: Napster Companion, a conversational AI platform offering natural video interactions with a vast ecosystem of intelligent agents, and Napster View, a 3-D, second-screen device designed to bring dynamic, two-way conversations to life in immersive, spatial form. Companion is now available under a free trial; View, which costs $199, ships in August.
The products are designed to help consumers engage with AI every day through lifelike personas built to help them learn new skills, solve problems, discover new things, and work — all via video conversations. In a demo, the company provided a male AI agent who shared Techstrong’s coverage of OpenAI’s acquisition of Jony Ive’s io in a dazzling visual tour.
“With the formation of Napster AI, we’re laying the groundwork for a multi-modal experience and integrated ecosystem that puts meaningful, human-centered technology in everyone’s hands,” Napster Chief Technology Officer Edo Segal said in an interview. “Napster Spaces, Companion, and View represent the first steps in our long-term vision to build the tech stack for the future AI-powered internet.”
Napster Companion is a scalable assistant platform that connects people to a suite of domain-specific intelligent and personality-driven AI agents. Each agent incorporates 30 psychometric parameters that gives it its own character, domain expertise, communication style, and task fluency, according to Segal.
“Napster Companion and Napster View aren’t traditional AI productivity tools,” Napster CEO John Acunto said in a statement. “We’re focused on delivering a modality that’s approachable and intuitive for anyone. But most important is ensuring your conversations are your business and all that data is securely stored, never sold, and can be exported by you at any time. Ultimately, as AI becomes a fixture in our daily routines, we want to ensure it serves users — whether individuals or enterprises—in ways that are useful, respectful, empowering, and secure.”
Napster’s corporate reboot comes after a rebrand earlier this year, and the recent acquisition of Segal’s AI firm, Touchcast, for $500 million. The deal recently closed.
Napster’s resurrection as an AI company adds a new chapter to what had been a cautionary, boom-to-bust parable in Silicon Valley history. Despite Napster’s popularity at the turn of the century, it encountered legal difficulties over copyright infringement, which forced its closure in 2001 following a series of lawsuits. It filed for bankruptcy in 2002.
