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Jawbone (company)

Jawbone
Industry Consumer electronics
Founded December 1, 1999 (1999-12-01) (As Aliph)
Founder Alexander Asseily
and Hosain Rahman
Headquarters San Francisco, California,, U.S.
Key people
Alexander Asseily (Chairman)
Hosain Rahman (CEO)
Yves Behar (Designer)
Products
Services
Website www.jawbone.com

Jawbone is an American privately held consumer technology and wearable products company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It develops and sells wearable technology such as wristbands and portable audio devices, wireless speakers, Bluetooth headsets, and related technology. Jawbone markets its wearable products as part of the Internet of things.

Alexander Asseily and Hosain Rahman, who met as Stanford University undergraduates, founded Aliph (which would later become Jawbone) around 1999 in San Francisco.

According to later legal documents, the company was originally called AliphCom and formed in March 1998 during the dot-com bubble. In 2002, Aliph won a contract with DARPA, the U.S. military’s research arm, to research ways for combat soldiers to communicate with each other in difficult conditions. The pair began to develop a mobile phone headset designed to suppress background noise. After undisclosed seed funding, about $1.5 million was raised in June 2002.

In 2006, Aliph released a YouTube demonstration of a wireless version of its Jawbone headset and announced that Yves Béhar would be hired as vice president and creative director. The company’s earliest venture capital investor was the Mayfield Fund, which invested $0.8 million in December 2006. In January 2007, Aliph revealed its wireless Jawbone headset at the Consumer Electronics Show. In July 2007, Khosla Ventures made a $5 million investment in the company.

At the beginning of 2008, Aliph received another major investment of $30 million from Sequoia Capital. Aliph announced another Bluetooth headset in May 2008. New Jawbone became available for sale at the Apple Store for the first time in the summer of 2008. Aliph promoted New Jawbone by offering a $20 discount to drivers who had been cited for using mobile phones while driving after the state of California passed legislation to ban the use of handheld phones for drivers.


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