This London Startup Wants to Kill Your Keyboard With a $150 AI Microphone

Key points

• Relay, a London-based startup founded by two former Nothing employees, launched its voice-to-text macOS app in mid-2025.
• The Relay Q hardware microphone will cost $150 and ship in early 2027, bundling one year of software.
• After the free year, the subscription costs $15 per month, and it works without the hardware.
• Relay's transcription runs on Google's Gemini AI models, and audio passes through Relay's servers before reaching Google's for processing.
• Two rival wearable microphone products, the Stream Ring and the Pebble Index 01, are already shipping to early buyers.

Relay, a London startup, is betting you dislike typing enough to pay to stop. Its macOS app is available now. The physical product, a portable microphone called the Relay Q, follows in early 2027.

What does Relay actually do?

Relay is a voice-to-text tool that goes beyond basic dictation. Hold a hotkey (the function key by default), speak into any text field on your Mac, and Relay types what you said, strips filler words and fixes your grammar along the way.

The engine runs on Google's Gemini models, a family of large language models (the same category of AI that powers chatbots like ChatGPT). That matters for privacy: your audio travels through Relay's own servers on its way to Google's servers for processing. Relay says it does not keep your data after that, and any local history lives on your device where you can delete it.

Granting any AI tool access to your microphone and screen carries real trade-offs, similar to concerns raised about Microsoft's Recall feature. Our earlier story on ChatGPT's Mac app watching your computer activity covers how that permissions question is playing out across the macOS ecosystem right now. Read the permissions carefully before installing.

Relay also offers Skills: automated sequences where it can open an app and draft a message from a single voice command. Wired, which first tested the beta, found the Slack skill unreliable but the Google Calendar skill solid.

Who built it and why?

Cookie Xu and Raymond Zhu both worked at Nothing, the consumer electronics company. Xu led AI and services; Zhu managed hardware products. They used dictation software daily but kept hitting the same wall in an open office: speak too loudly and colleagues notice, speak quietly enough and the laptop mic drops every word.

Dedicated hardware is their answer. The Relay Q is a small cylinder. Press the top to dictate, or clip the button to your shirt for hands-free use. Whisper directly into it and it should pick you up clearly, according to Zhu. A double-tap sends the message. It charges on a small desk dock, and a separate MagSafe grip lets you snap it to the back of a compatible iPhone.

How does the price break down?

Should you pay attention now?

Relay isn't alone. The Stream Ring and the Pebble Index 01 are both wearable microphones already shipping to early buyers. Relay considered a ring and passed, partly because the smart-ring market is crowded. The cylinder is a bet that desk workers want something they can set down and forget.

Wired's reviewer noted that Relay's transcription is noticeably behind what Google's Rambler feature delivers on the Pixel 11 series: it misses words and fumbles punctuation sometimes. Accuracy should improve once dedicated hardware removes the current activation delay.

The practical judgement here: the software is real and available today, the hardware is nearly two years out, and $15 a month for transcription is only good value if you're typing a lot of long-form text at a desk. Download the app, try it with whatever mic you own, and decide whether it earns that subscription before you commit to the 2027 hardware.