This year, the foundational capabilities of large models have made another leap, and AI tools like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Doubao are becoming common assistants for an increasing number of professionals in the workplace.
The capabilities of these AIs are indeed powerful, but there is also a significant threshold: to get them to “work,” it often requires a lot of preparation of materials in advance. In other words, today’s AIs are more like high-IQ consultants, whereas from the perspective of actual efficiency improvement, what we really need is an “intelligent assistant” that stays by our side, helps me record information, and gives reminders and feedback at critical moments.
Mobvoi is trying to fill this gap. In April, the company first unveiled its globally first Agentic AI hardware product, TicNote. On June 25, this hardware was officially launched in the domestic market. At the launch event, Mobvoi’s founder Li Zhifei emphasized that this is not just a voice recorder, translator, or voice assistant, but a “personal AI thinking partner.”
Before asking about the exit, some companies both domestically and internationally have tried to combine large models with recording hardware, but most still regard AI as a tool for processing audio information, mainly using it to organize meeting notes or for translation purposes. Although TicNote has similar capabilities, its positioning goes beyond that. By continuously recording users’ work and life information, TicNote effectively becomes a “super assistant” that accompanies users 24/7, proactively providing work inspiration and insights based on daily communication content and the reasoning capabilities of large models.
As an “old friend” of Geek Park, we have witnessed the complete journey of Out of the Door from startup to listing, and experienced its phase of strategic contraction in the direction of large models. Now, Out of the Door has chosen to re-enter the large model track in a hardware way. This decision is not simply a trend-following or imitation, but rather the result of founder Li Zhifei’s years of accumulation in the field of human-computer voice interaction. While seeing existing paths being validated, he also perceives deeper possibilities and hopes to create better products in this direction.
The appearance of TicNote resembles a small magnetic charging treasure, with a thickness of about 3 millimeters, allowing it to be attached to the back of the phone magnetically throughout the day, causing almost no impact on daily use.
TicNote | From: Mobvoi
Unlike traditional voice recorders, TicNote’s card-style design is aimed at “all-weather recording” scenarios from the very beginning. Users can easily control the recording operation mode.
This hardware form is not a creation of Out of the Box; earlier products like Plaud Note also adopted a similar design. Its advantage lies in its ability to operate stably for long periods in scenarios that require a large amount of voice recording, such as education, media, and creative planning, while leveraging the capabilities of large models to enhance the efficiency of transcription, translation, and summarization in post-processing.
This application scenario has gained a certain degree of market validation, but Mobvoi believes that the combination of card-style recording hardware and large models contains greater potential beyond just recording and processing functions.
In addition to basic functions such as transcription and summarization, TicNote’s biggest feature is its built-in AI Agent “Shadow AI.” It supports real-time conversations, logical reasoning, knowledge integration, and writing suggestions, allowing for a deeper understanding of users’ content creation needs. Whether in work, study, or the process of exploring inspiration, it can maintain a dialogue with users, assist in completing tasks, and become a personal intelligent assistant.
Yolanda is one of the beta users of TicNote. As a tech executive and a mother of a child preparing for the high school entrance exam, she often faces the challenges of fragmented time and information overload, making it difficult to balance family and work. TicNote has greatly alleviated this predicament for her.
An online parent meeting conflicted with an important company review meeting, so Yolanda couldn’t manage both at the same time. Therefore, she used TicNote to “invisibly” record the entire content of the parent meeting, accurately transcribing and automatically extracting key points afterward, organizing them into clear written minutes and a mind map, allowing her to grasp the meeting information comprehensively without needing to replay it.
In addition, Yolanda also had the children bring TicNote to each tutoring session. By the end of the semester, TicNote not only recorded the key points from the teachers but also helped summarize the children’s weak areas. As the high school entrance exam approached, the children used TicNote to organize the “on-site toolkit” and “emergency methods” taught by the teachers, and combined with their weak points to form clear review materials.
From Yolanda’s experience, it can be seen that TicNote is not just a portable recording tool, but through the integrated design of hardware and software combined with large model capabilities, it is gradually evolving into a truly “understanding you” intelligent assistant. Behind such a product is a decade-long dedication by Mobvoi in the field of voice technology and human-computer interaction.
The launch of TicNote by Mobvoi is no coincidence. The “hardware-software integration + AI services” path represented by this product is actually a natural result of Mobvoi’s decade-long accumulation of technology and product exploration.
Since its establishment in 2012, Out of the Door has made human-machine voice interaction its core direction, becoming one of the earliest companies in China to practice the “voice-first” concept. The self-developed voice assistant app launched in the early days focuses on Chinese voice recognition and natural language understanding. In the following years, the company continuously attempted to embed voice capabilities into hardware, successively launching products such as the smart watch TicWatch, smart rearview mirror TicMirror, and translator TicTranslator, constantly exploring the application possibilities of combining voice with devices.
These products were at the forefront of the industry at the time and accumulated considerable technical experience. However, challenges such as the usage threshold and cost of voice interaction have always hindered it from becoming the mainstream mode of operation. Users need to communicate with devices through wake words and command languages, which results in high interaction costs and low fault tolerance, making it difficult to handle complex tasks. As a result, Mobvoi temporarily narrowed its hardware product line and shifted its focus to refining AI capabilities.
But this evolution of human-computer interaction has never truly been abandoned by Mobvoi. The arrival of the era of large models has brought new opportunities for human-computer voice interaction. With the improvement in model comprehension and generation capabilities, human-computer dialogue has become more natural, and an increasing number of users are beginning to communicate with AI in a conversational manner. Voice, as the interaction method closest to human expression habits, has thus regained its value and is expected to become an important gateway connecting AI with the real world.
TicNote was launched against this backdrop. It is not only a smart device for recording but also continuously organizes the content users hear and say every day into structured information through the built-in AI Agent “Shadow AI”, creating a personalized “knowledge base” for each individual. Based on this personalized knowledge base, the large model can not only be efficiently accessed but can also connect to the network to explore the value of information in higher dimensions.
This product form is an integrated embodiment of the multidimensional technological accumulation of voice recognition, natural language understanding, and terminal design by Mobvoi. Taking the “Flash Chat” feature of TicNote as an example, users can initiate voice conversations at any time during the recording process, quickly review previous content, and extract key information, suitable for scenarios that require immediate feedback, such as interviews and meetings. This “record and ask” interaction model is the result of Mobvoi’s ten years of continuous efforts in voice technology.
At the same time, TicNote also has automated project management capabilities. In the past, even AI voice recorders were often limited to a single scenario, processing a segment of content only once after recording. However, in the interactive logic of TicNote, all recorded data is unified into a sustainably expandable knowledge base, allowing users to call upon, organize, and continue conversations across different scenarios and times at any time. This more intuitive way of organizing information for users also means that TicNote is no longer just for professional users, but has a wide range of applicability in everyday use.
More importantly, this time, Out of the Door is no longer trying to “control a machine” with voice, but rather leveraging the capabilities of large models to make voice an entry point for building knowledge and a support for promoting thinking.
Looking back, TicNote is not just a turn in technological direction, but more like a completion—it brings together every step taken by Out There Asking over the past decade, concentrating experiences scattered across multiple levels such as human-computer interaction, hardware design, and AI services into a product that is more suitable for this era.
Currently, ADHD has become a hot social topic. “Difficulty concentrating” as a symptom is becoming increasingly popular. Besides actual ADHD patients, more and more ordinary people are beginning to notice similar symptoms in themselves and even starting to “self-diagnose.”
This has a lot to do with the massive information overload we are experiencing. Looking back, humanity has never had to receive and process so much information every day as we do today. This information pours into our eyes not only through our phones but also exists in every scenario of our lives. We receive too much information every day, and the shelf life of our thinking is getting shorter.
A common perception in the past was that, compared to physical labor, mental labor was easy, and sitting in an office was a “privilege” for a select few, a common pursuit for people. However, now, more and more people are engaged in information-related work, yet feel tired or even weary of it.
We are increasingly aware that processing information is also a burden that can lead to “fatigue.” In the present, we need to reduce the burden on our brains, just as we replace manual labor with mechanical tools. Such devices must have perception, interaction, and assistive thinking and insight capabilities, becoming our “primary senses” and “auxiliary brains.”
This may be the ultimate ambition of TicNote and Out of the Door to Ask.
Today, the vast majority of AI products are providing users with information from a “single scenario perspective.” In fact, the ultimate future of AI should be able to assist users in managing their entire memory and thinking, which includes not only information and knowledge but also recollections. Currently, the AI industry has proposed the concept of “life streams.” The recorded life stream is essentially our “memory warehouse.” What Agentic AI can do is elevate this memory warehouse, unearthing thoughts and insights that we are often unaware of, ultimately helping us lighten the burden of receiving information and sparking more inspiration.
In the foreseeable future, each of us will need an agent with perfect memory and the ability to assist us in our thinking, helping us to reorganize the information we receive and expand the dimensions of our thought. The built-in “Eureka Moment” feature in TicNote has already offered a glimpse of this future. It can provide users with AI perspectives of “insights” based on the data saved by the user.
Currently, the vast majority of AI assistant products are trained based on publicly available corpora in a broad sense, and they largely aim for a goal of “omniscience and omnipotence” in their training and development. However, what more users actually need is a kind of “personalized AI”. This Agentic AI should understand our private knowledge more and provide information that is relevant to us, helping us build personalized experiences.
For Du Chumen Wenwen and Li Zhifei, TicNote is not only a successful realization of their technological ideals over the past twelve years but also a new departure towards the future of AIGC. They have arrived at a new era of human-computer interaction, an era of AIGC. TicNote is by no means a “speculation” in terms of products, but rather a culmination of a long-term technological “romance.”
In April last year, Out of the Door Technology went public, becoming the first AIGC stock in China. For Li Zhifei and his team, solving the issue of “money” has never been the most important thing; what matters more is that they can refine the technology they firmly believe in to its best state and then bring it to the world.
Now, it has taken a solid step forward again.
This year, the foundational capabilities of large models have made another leap, and AI tools like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Doubao are becoming common assistants for an increasing number of professionals in the workplace.
The capabilities of these AIs are indeed powerful, but there is also a significant threshold: to get them to “work,” it often requires a lot of preparation of materials in advance. In other words, today’s AIs are more like high-IQ consultants, whereas from the perspective of actual efficiency improvement, what we really need is an “intelligent assistant” that stays by our side, helps me record information, and gives reminders and feedback at critical moments.
Mobvoi is trying to fill this gap. In April, the company first unveiled its globally first Agentic AI hardware product, TicNote. On June 25, this hardware was officially launched in the domestic market. At the launch event, Mobvoi’s founder Li Zhifei emphasized that this is not just a voice recorder, translator, or voice assistant, but a “personal AI thinking partner.”
Before asking about the exit, some companies both domestically and internationally have tried to combine large models with recording hardware, but most still regard AI as a tool for processing audio information, mainly using it to organize meeting notes or for translation purposes. Although TicNote has similar capabilities, its positioning goes beyond that. By continuously recording users’ work and life information, TicNote effectively becomes a “super assistant” that accompanies users 24/7, proactively providing work inspiration and insights based on daily communication content and the reasoning capabilities of large models.
As an “old friend” of Geek Park, we have witnessed the complete journey of Out of the Door from startup to listing, and experienced its phase of strategic contraction in the direction of large models. Now, Out of the Door has chosen to re-enter the large model track in a hardware way. This decision is not simply a trend-following or imitation, but rather the result of founder Li Zhifei’s years of accumulation in the field of human-computer voice interaction. While seeing existing paths being validated, he also perceives deeper possibilities and hopes to create better products in this direction.
The appearance of TicNote resembles a small magnetic charging treasure, with a thickness of about 3 millimeters, allowing it to be attached to the back of the phone magnetically throughout the day, causing almost no impact on daily use.
TicNote | From: Mobvoi
Unlike traditional voice recorders, TicNote’s card-style design is aimed at “all-weather recording” scenarios from the very beginning. Users can easily control the recording operation mode.
This hardware form is not a creation of Out of the Box; earlier products like Plaud Note also adopted a similar design. Its advantage lies in its ability to operate stably for long periods in scenarios that require a large amount of voice recording, such as education, media, and creative planning, while leveraging the capabilities of large models to enhance the efficiency of transcription, translation, and summarization in post-processing.
This application scenario has gained a certain degree of market validation, but Mobvoi believes that the combination of card-style recording hardware and large models contains greater potential beyond just recording and processing functions.
In addition to basic functions such as transcription and summarization, TicNote’s biggest feature is its built-in AI Agent “Shadow AI.” It supports real-time conversations, logical reasoning, knowledge integration, and writing suggestions, allowing for a deeper understanding of users’ content creation needs. Whether in work, study, or the process of exploring inspiration, it can maintain a dialogue with users, assist in completing tasks, and become a personal intelligent assistant.
Yolanda is one of the beta users of TicNote. As a tech executive and a mother of a child preparing for the high school entrance exam, she often faces the challenges of fragmented time and information overload, making it difficult to balance family and work. TicNote has greatly alleviated this predicament for her.
An online parent meeting conflicted with an important company review meeting, so Yolanda couldn’t manage both at the same time. Therefore, she used TicNote to “invisibly” record the entire content of the parent meeting, accurately transcribing and automatically extracting key points afterward, organizing them into clear written minutes and a mind map, allowing her to grasp the meeting information comprehensively without needing to replay it.
In addition, Yolanda also had the children bring TicNote to each tutoring session. By the end of the semester, TicNote not only recorded the key points from the teachers but also helped summarize the children’s weak areas. As the high school entrance exam approached, the children used TicNote to organize the “on-site toolkit” and “emergency methods” taught by the teachers, and combined with their weak points to form clear review materials.
From Yolanda’s experience, it can be seen that TicNote is not just a portable recording tool, but through the integrated design of hardware and software combined with large model capabilities, it is gradually evolving into a truly “understanding you” intelligent assistant. Behind such a product is a decade-long dedication by Mobvoi in the field of voice technology and human-computer interaction.
The launch of TicNote by Mobvoi is no coincidence. The “hardware-software integration + AI services” path represented by this product is actually a natural result of Mobvoi’s decade-long accumulation of technology and product exploration.
Since its establishment in 2012, Out of the Door has made human-machine voice interaction its core direction, becoming one of the earliest companies in China to practice the “voice-first” concept. The self-developed voice assistant app launched in the early days focuses on Chinese voice recognition and natural language understanding. In the following years, the company continuously attempted to embed voice capabilities into hardware, successively launching products such as the smart watch TicWatch, smart rearview mirror TicMirror, and translator TicTranslator, constantly exploring the application possibilities of combining voice with devices.
These products were at the forefront of the industry at the time and accumulated considerable technical experience. However, challenges such as the usage threshold and cost of voice interaction have always hindered it from becoming the mainstream mode of operation. Users need to communicate with devices through wake words and command languages, which results in high interaction costs and low fault tolerance, making it difficult to handle complex tasks. As a result, Mobvoi temporarily narrowed its hardware product line and shifted its focus to refining AI capabilities.
But this evolution of human-computer interaction has never truly been abandoned by Mobvoi. The arrival of the era of large models has brought new opportunities for human-computer voice interaction. With the improvement in model comprehension and generation capabilities, human-computer dialogue has become more natural, and an increasing number of users are beginning to communicate with AI in a conversational manner. Voice, as the interaction method closest to human expression habits, has thus regained its value and is expected to become an important gateway connecting AI with the real world.
TicNote was launched against this backdrop. It is not only a smart device for recording but also continuously organizes the content users hear and say every day into structured information through the built-in AI Agent “Shadow AI”, creating a personalized “knowledge base” for each individual. Based on this personalized knowledge base, the large model can not only be efficiently accessed but can also connect to the network to explore the value of information in higher dimensions.
This product form is an integrated embodiment of the multidimensional technological accumulation of voice recognition, natural language understanding, and terminal design by Mobvoi. Taking the “Flash Chat” feature of TicNote as an example, users can initiate voice conversations at any time during the recording process, quickly review previous content, and extract key information, suitable for scenarios that require immediate feedback, such as interviews and meetings. This “record and ask” interaction model is the result of Mobvoi’s ten years of continuous efforts in voice technology.
At the same time, TicNote also has automated project management capabilities. In the past, even AI voice recorders were often limited to a single scenario, processing a segment of content only once after recording. However, in the interactive logic of TicNote, all recorded data is unified into a sustainably expandable knowledge base, allowing users to call upon, organize, and continue conversations across different scenarios and times at any time. This more intuitive way of organizing information for users also means that TicNote is no longer just for professional users, but has a wide range of applicability in everyday use.
More importantly, this time, Out of the Door is no longer trying to “control a machine” with voice, but rather leveraging the capabilities of large models to make voice an entry point for building knowledge and a support for promoting thinking.
Looking back, TicNote is not just a turn in technological direction, but more like a completion—it brings together every step taken by Out There Asking over the past decade, concentrating experiences scattered across multiple levels such as human-computer interaction, hardware design, and AI services into a product that is more suitable for this era.
Currently, ADHD has become a hot social topic. “Difficulty concentrating” as a symptom is becoming increasingly popular. Besides actual ADHD patients, more and more ordinary people are beginning to notice similar symptoms in themselves and even starting to “self-diagnose.”
This has a lot to do with the massive information overload we are experiencing. Looking back, humanity has never had to receive and process so much information every day as we do today. This information pours into our eyes not only through our phones but also exists in every scenario of our lives. We receive too much information every day, and the shelf life of our thinking is getting shorter.
A common perception in the past was that, compared to physical labor, mental labor was easy, and sitting in an office was a “privilege” for a select few, a common pursuit for people. However, now, more and more people are engaged in information-related work, yet feel tired or even weary of it.
We are increasingly aware that processing information is also a burden that can lead to “fatigue.” In the present, we need to reduce the burden on our brains, just as we replace manual labor with mechanical tools. Such devices must have perception, interaction, and assistive thinking and insight capabilities, becoming our “primary senses” and “auxiliary brains.”
This may be the ultimate ambition of TicNote and Out of the Door to Ask.
Today, the vast majority of AI products are providing users with information from a “single scenario perspective.” In fact, the ultimate future of AI should be able to assist users in managing their entire memory and thinking, which includes not only information and knowledge but also recollections. Currently, the AI industry has proposed the concept of “life streams.” The recorded life stream is essentially our “memory warehouse.” What Agentic AI can do is elevate this memory warehouse, unearthing thoughts and insights that we are often unaware of, ultimately helping us lighten the burden of receiving information and sparking more inspiration.
In the foreseeable future, each of us will need an agent with perfect memory and the ability to assist us in our thinking, helping us to reorganize the information we receive and expand the dimensions of our thought. The built-in “Eureka Moment” feature in TicNote has already offered a glimpse of this future. It can provide users with AI perspectives of “insights” based on the data saved by the user.
Currently, the vast majority of AI assistant products are trained based on publicly available corpora in a broad sense, and they largely aim for a goal of “omniscience and omnipotence” in their training and development. However, what more users actually need is a kind of “personalized AI”. This Agentic AI should understand our private knowledge more and provide information that is relevant to us, helping us build personalized experiences.
For Du Chumen Wenwen and Li Zhifei, TicNote is not only a successful realization of their technological ideals over the past twelve years but also a new departure towards the future of AIGC. They have arrived at a new era of human-computer interaction, an era of AIGC. TicNote is by no means a “speculation” in terms of products, but rather a culmination of a long-term technological “romance.”
In April last year, Out of the Door Technology went public, becoming the first AIGC stock in China. For Li Zhifei and his team, solving the issue of “money” has never been the most important thing; what matters more is that they can refine the technology they firmly believe in to its best state and then bring it to the world.
Now, it has taken a solid step forward again.