Friend shipped its $129 pendant and bet heavily on subway ads

The design

By August 2025, Friend Global, Inc.'s own website described a $129 AI companion pendant with "no subscription" and a one-year limited warranty, sold only in the United States and Canada and made in Canada. The device, worn around the neck, listens continuously and sends its wearer text responses through a paired phone app; the company's FAQ states "all memories are encrypted by your friend's circuit board" and that a lost or damaged unit's memories become "inaccessible forever." Separately, reporting from September 2025 documents founder Avi Schiffmann spending more than $1 million on a New York City subway campaign, over 11,000 car cards, 1,000 platform posters, and 130 urban panels, pairing shipping with an aggressive offline marketing push.

What the evidence says

Friend Global's site establishes what the shipped product is and costs; it does not state when shipping to preorder customers began, so this entry cannot fix a precise date beyond noting the product was live for sale by August 2025. The TechCrunch reporting adds a company-sourced account of the campaign's scale, quoting Schiffmann calling the spend "a huge gamble" and admitting "I don't have much money left," a founder's own characterization, not an audited figure. It also documents the reception: ads were vandalized with messages telling people to "get real friends," reactions recorded by a named outlet, not verified independently here.

What it asks of people

The product asks for near-continuous physical proximity, a pendant worn on the body, always listening, in exchange for a companion that texts back without a subscription fee. Friend's FAQ states software "updates may add capabilities but will never overwrite" the device's learned personality, a continuity assurance that is the company's own claim, not an audited guarantee. The campaign, per TechCrunch, was deliberately designed with "extensive white space" so ads would "socially comment" on public unease about AI, asking bystanders in shared public space to encounter the marketing whether or not they use the product.

Privacy and safeguards

Friend's FAQ addresses one narrow safeguard directly, on-device memory encryption, but confirms damage or loss destroys those memories permanently rather than only restricting offline access. The site does not describe, in material reviewed here, what audio leaves the device for processing, how long audio or transcripts are retained, or what happens to data if a user cancels. An always-listening pendant raises retention and bystander-recording questions beyond what either source resolves.

• What audio actually leaves the pendant, and where is it processed and stored?
• How does always-on listening interact with the privacy of people near the wearer who never consented?
• Does the company's promise about personality continuity survive a change of ownership, funding, or business model?

Friend Global's own materials describe a simple, low-friction product, one price, no subscription, a warranty, while the advertising campaign that introduced many people to it, as reported independently, spent heavily to force a conversation about AI companionship into a shared public space. The gap between the product's quiet design and the campaign's confrontational reach is itself a choice worth naming.