Legato exits stealth with $12M and AI hearing glasses

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 gap Legato, a new hearing tech company, aims to close. The startup emerged from stealth Wednesday with $12 million in funding and a first look at its AI hearing glasses, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. The glasses, called Legato Frames, integrate the company’s patented hearing-assistance technology into the arms of eyewear frames and are expected to launch later this fall.

Legato was founded by Mehul Trivedi and Steve Romine, who bring wearables and hearing-care experience from Bose, where Trivedi led the creation of Bose Frames and Romine ran the hearing aids division. Trivedi later worked at EssilorLuxottica leading smart-eyewear efforts and the Meta Ray-Bans, while Romine served as COO of hearing-care company Audicus; the pair founded Legato in late 2024 after Trivedi took time off to explore the intersection of hearing technology and smart eyewear. “Our goal is to make hearing as ubiquitous as vision,” Trivedi told TechCrunch, drawing a comparison to how people casually get glasses at an eye exam and wear them for life.

Legato is targeting people with mild to moderate hearing loss, which the startup says is the largest segment of the hearing-loss population, and set out to address the cost, comfort, and stigma associated with traditional hearing aids by making the glasses as small and lightweight as possible. The company developed a proprietary acoustic system, signal-processing stack, and mechanical architecture to do so. Where traditional hearing aids often use directional microphones that work well in quiet settings but struggle in noisy ones, Legato instead uses an AI-powered system to differentiate background noise from voices and amplify only the voices, aiming to make conversations clearer without the cognitively draining listening experience some traditional hearing aids create. The frames have an open-ear design but use a dual-speaker system that directs sound toward the wearer while canceling sound that escapes, reducing sound by 99% just a few inches from the ear.

The company’s funding, from Neotribe Ventures, Listen, and Village Global, has mostly gone toward product development and marketing. When the frames launch, Legato says they will be available through select eye-care providers nationwide, cost “a fraction” of traditional hearing aids, and may be eligible for vision insurance when purchased through an eye-care clinic.

Why it matters

By bundling hearing assistance into ordinary-looking eyewear sold through eye-care channels rather than audiology clinics, Legato is betting it can reach the roughly 80% of people with diagnosed hearing loss who currently skip treatment — a distribution and stigma problem as much as a technology one.