Hearing tech startup Legato emerges from stealth with $12M and a peek at its AI hearing glasses

Legato is stepping out of stealth with a fresh $12 million and a first look at the product it hopes will make hearing care feel less like medical gear and more like something you put on with your shirt in the morning. The startup’s first device, Legato Frames, tucks its hearing tech into the arms of eyeglasses and is slated to arrive later this fall.

That pitch lands in a big market with a stubborn problem. The company says about 50 million adults in the US have hearing loss, but only around 20% of those diagnosed actually seek treatment. Legato is going after mild to moderate hearing loss, which it says is the biggest slice of that population.

The company was founded in late 2024 by Mehul Trivedi and Steve Romine, two people who’ve spent years around wearables and hearing care. Trivedi helped create Bose Frames at Bose, later worked on smart eyewear at EssilorLuxottica and on the Meta Ray-Bans, and Romine led Bose’s hearing aids division before becoming COO at Audicus.

Legato’s bet is that traditional hearing aids fail not just on sound, but on comfort, cost, and plain old stigma. The company says it built a proprietary acoustic system, signal-processing stack, and mechanical architecture to keep the frames small and light. Instead of relying on directional microphones alone, its AI system is meant to separate voices from background noise and amplify only the speech.

There’s also a privacy angle baked in. The frames use a dual-speaker setup that sends sound toward the wearer while cutting leakage, which Legato says reduces sound by 99% a few inches from the ear. The company says the product will be sold through select eye-care providers nationwide, should cost a fraction of traditional hearing aids, and may be eligible for vision insurance when bought through an eye-care clinic.