Glasses That Help You Talk After Losing Your Voice Box
Uhura Bionics is selling two wearable devices for people who have had their voice boxes removed. The basic model costs $500. The high-end model costs $1,500 and is called Whitney, after singer Whitney Houston. TechCrunch
The company was started in 2023 by Konrad Zieliński. He lost his voice to cancer while studying at the University of Warsaw. He later earned a PhD on artificial voice systems for people without a voice box. He had surgery to remove his whole voice box. After surgery, he could still communicate with tools that already existed.
Uhura was chosen for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026's Battlefield 200. Disrupt 2026 will be held October 13-15 at Moscone West in San Francisco. TechCrunch Its Startup Battlefield listing describes the product as an artificial voice box for singing, laughing and showing emotion. TechCrunch
Both devices are sold as wellness products, so buyers pay out of pocket. Uhura is seeking low-risk medical device approval, called Class I, in Europe and later in the U.S. Zieliński puts the market for these devices at about $2 billion.
He knows the problem firsthand. He said he hopes people will wear Whitney daily, like glasses for poor eyesight. The plan is daily wear, not hospital care. Uhura plans to add higher-pitched voices for women and settings so users do not all sound alike.
Zieliński plans to bring Whitney onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt and at SF Tech Week in October, where he will sing with help from Whitney. Singing is hard. It needs steady control of pitch, timing and breathing that simple speech aids, which play short set phrases, do not try to do.
The broader context here is selling as wellness hardware now while working on medical approval at the same time. Selling this way is faster, but buyers carry the cost and support on their own. Low-risk approval in Europe would allow sales through doctors and insurance payment, without the heavy testing needed for higher-risk devices. The $500 and $1,500 prices test what people will pay for now.
In my view, the voice itself is worth watching. Standard computer voices often sound the same, and users notice. Choices for pitch and personal sound help adoption, because a voice is part of daily social life. People use an aid more when it feels normal. If Uhura can handle talking, laughing and singing without making everyone sound alike, daily wear becomes more likely.
Looking further ahead, the benefit is simple. A person who can talk, laugh and sing in public with a familiar device gets back more than clear speech.
