The Rise of the AI Tamagotchi: Why Big Tech Wants You to Fall for a Digital Pet Before Selling You Hardware

Silicon Valley has a new obsession, and it looks suspiciously like the pixelated pets that dominated schoolyards in the late 1990s. OpenAI and Meta, two of the most powerful players in the artificial intelligence race, are both betting that the road to mainstream AI hardware runs through cuteness — cartoonish, blob-like companions designed to live on your screen before they ever live in your pocket.

The strategy marks a notable shift in how tech giants are approaching one of the industry’s most stubborn problems: nobody seems to actually want dedicated AI gadgets. Despite years of hype, devices like the Humane AI Pin and the wearable Friend pendant have become cautionary tales rather than success stories, generating more backlash and ridicule than genuine consumer enthusiasm. The “hardware is hard” mantra has never felt more true.

Yet OpenAI and Meta appear undeterred, and they seem to be converging on the same workaround: soften the market with adorable, personality-driven software agents first, then follow up with physical devices once people are already attached.

At OpenAI’s DevDay event, CEO Sam Altman unveiled Dots, a new AI agent platform populated by customizable, googly-eyed colored blobs. The characters have an unmistakably toy-like charm, and when pressed by reporters on whether Dots might eventually be baked into a piece of hardware, Altman didn’t deny it. He called the idea “a very reasonable thing to assume we may do someday,” while keeping specifics close to the chest. OpenAI is already reportedly collaborating with legendary former Apple designer Jony Ive on a hardware project, though public filings suggest that device won’t ship until at least February 2027.

Meta is moving faster and being far more explicit about the connection between its software mascot and upcoming hardware. The company’s Muse AI agent — a cuddly, expressive character — is set to be paired with a small wearable called the Muse Charm, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has likened to a keychain accessory. Onstage, Zuckerberg described it as carrying “a lot of technology” into a small package, positioning it as the fastest way to interact with Muse for anyone not wearing smart glasses. Unlike OpenAI’s more cautious timeline, Meta is reportedly aiming to get the Charm into shoppers’ hands before this year’s holiday season.

The underlying logic is straightforward. Rather than asking consumers to spend hundreds of dollars on an unfamiliar gadget with an unproven use case — the mistake that doomed earlier entrants — both companies want to first build emotional familiarity with an AI persona that lives for free (or nearly free) on a phone or computer. If people come to rely on, and even feel affection for, their digital companion, the argument goes, they’ll be primed to pay for a physical extension of that relationship. It’s a strategy that leans as much on psychology and emotional attachment as it does on raw technical capability.

It also represents an implicit acknowledgment that earlier AI hardware failed not because the underlying technology was necessarily broken, but because the products were introduced without first proving to skeptical consumers that the AI itself was worth carrying around. Friend, the companion-style pendant that drew widespread mockery for its ad campaign, tried something similar by leading with personality — but without the backing of a tech giant’s ecosystem, trust, or marketing muscle, it struggled to break through.

Whether OpenAI and Meta can succeed where smaller startups failed remains an open question. Public sentiment around AI has grown increasingly fraught, with concerns over data privacy, job displacement, and the sheer ubiquity of AI-generated content souring some consumers on the technology altogether. Strapping a smiling cartoon face onto that anxiety may or may not be enough to change hearts and minds — or wallets.

Still, the parallel bets from two of the industry’s biggest spenders suggest a shared conviction: that the next wave of AI adoption won’t be won purely on specs or capability, but on whether people can be coaxed into caring about a digital creature enough to want it — literally — by their side.