Mehul Trivedi (l) and Steve Romine.
BOSTON, Mass. and NEWARK, N.J.—Legato, a hearing technology company co-founded in 2024 by Mehul Trivedi, CEO, and Steve Romine, president, officially emerged from stealth last week with $12 million in funding from venture capital firms Neotribe Ventures, Listen and Village Global. The company also offered a debut look at its first product, Legato Frames, a set of AI-powered hearing glasses with integrated hearing-assistance technology in the temples that are slated to hit the market this fall.
“Traditional hearing aids have existed for 70 years, but the cost, discomfort, and stigma turn away so many people who could really benefit from them,” Trivedi said. “We wanted to turn a hard-to-swallow medical device into a product people are actually excited to wear—and give millions of people with hearing loss a reason to finally get off the sidelines.”
Trivedi and Romine, along with Legato’s team of about ten employees, bring with them significant expertise in wearables. Trivedi, who previously led the development and launch of Bose Frames, later served as senior vice president of wearable tech at EssilorLuxottica, while Romine held leadership roles across health, corporate development, and IP before serving as COO of direct-to-consumer hearing care company Audicus.
The founders said they were driven by the idea that despite decades of advances in hearing technology, hearing aids still don’t work for a lot of people who need them. In an exclusive conversation with VMAIL, Trivedi explained that the idea for Legato grew out of his desire to create products that people enjoy using.
“For me, I’ve been kind of building things my whole life. And I’ve always had this kind of compulsion towards making things that spark joy in people that they really love to play with and do,” he said. “Hearing was this really interesting space. It’s a prolific problem. There’s a billion and a half people with hearing loss and such a tiny fraction of people actually get it addressed, and it really comes down to a product problem.”
Legato points to data showing that hearing loss affects an estimated 50 million adults in the U.S., with only 20 percent of those with diagnosed loss addressing it. The company’s strategy was shaped by the belief that hearing devices should feel more like consumer products than medical devices, Trivedi told VMAIL, an approach that resonated with its backers.
“The hearing aid industry has spent decades optimizing for invisibility, making devices smaller so people won’t notice them,” said Kittu Kolluri, founder and managing director at Neotribe Ventures. “Legato flips that logic. The path to adoption isn’t to make hearing assistance disappear—it’s to make it a style choice. For the millions of people beginning to experience hearing loss, Legato is the first solution that doesn’t ask them to accept a diminished identity.”
“Legato represents the best of where AI is headed: thoughtful design wrapped around cutting-edge technology, all to unlock fuller, more human experiences,” said Rick Desai, managing partner at Listen. “We couldn’t be prouder to partner with them as they reframe the hearing category.”
Legato said in its launch announcement that its technology is protected by four granted patents and more than 20 pending applications. The system uses on-device sparse AI processing to identify speech and suppress non-speech noise in real time, with the goal of improving performance in challenging environments such as restaurants, bars and offices where traditional hearing aids often struggle with competing noise.
“We’re using what’s called sparse AI processing,” Trivedi told VMAIL. “It’s a chip that runs in the device. Nothing is recorded or transmitted. It is just in real time classifying: is this voice or is this not voice?”
He added, “What we pick up on the microphone is a much cleaner speech signal. And then on the output, because we’re open ear, aside from the obvious comfort and stigma benefits, you’re still hearing the natural world as you intend it. We only need to amplify the speech since we’re not blocking off anything else.”
Trivedi said the company intentionally chose eyewear and optical retail as its go-to-market path because it matches the way people already engage with vision correction. “I really think in many ways vision is the model,” he said. “People look at their eyewear and they’re proud of it, they get excited to shop for a new style. They wear them consistently.”
He added that the eyewear channel reduces friction for consumers. “That process is really effortless. People don’t mind going to an optometrist. They go through that experience, they get an update exam, they get their glasses, they’re happy,” he said.
Legato Frames will be available online at legatohearing.com and through select eyecare providers, offered at a price point the company said is a fraction of the cost of traditional hearing aids. The target customer is someone early in the hearing-loss journey who has not found existing solutions compelling, the company advised. Looking ahead, Trivedi said the company’s larger goal is to reach as many people as possible with a solution that feels both natural and effective.
“Our mission, we have that billion and a half people…” he said. “I want to help as many of those people as we can, build a product that is as easy as regular glasses, as effective as great hearing aids and appeals to as many of that billion and a half people as we can.”
