Mehul Trivedi Legato is a founder story built around a specific, stubborn barrier: 50 million American adults have hearing loss, but only about one in five of them actually do anything about it, largely because of cost, discomfort, and stigma. Trivedi is the co-founder and CEO of Legato, a Boston hearing technology startup that emerged from stealth on August 26, 2026, with $12 million in funding and a first look at its debut product, Legato Frames, hearing-assistance technology built directly into the arms of ordinary-looking eyeglasses.
Trivedi previously led the creation of Bose Frames, the audio eyewear line, before working on smart eyewear at EssilorLuxottica, including Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses. Here is how the person who helped build some of the most recognizable audio eyewear on the market turned his attention to the much harder, much more stigmatized problem of hearing loss itself.
Who Is Mehul Trivedi?
Mehul Trivedi is the co-founder and CEO of Legato, according to TechCrunch’s exclusive coverage of the company’s emergence from stealth. He built his career at the intersection of audio hardware and wearable design, most notably leading the creation of Bose Frames, the audio sunglasses line that helped popularize the idea of glasses that double as a wearable speaker.
Rather than staying at Bose, Trivedi eventually left to explore an adjacent but distinct category, and the path that followed would eventually bring him back to eyewear, this time solving a problem with far higher stakes than audio playback.
From Bose Frames to Meta Ray-Bans at EssilorLuxottica
After Bose, Trivedi moved to EssilorLuxottica, the eyewear giant behind brands including Ray-Ban and Oakley, where he led smart eyewear efforts and worked directly on Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, one of the most commercially successful smart glasses products to reach the mass market. That experience gave Trivedi direct, senior-level exposure to how a major eyewear manufacturer builds and scales genuinely wearable technology at consumer volume.
After years at larger companies, Trivedi took time off specifically to explore the intersection of hearing technology and smart eyewear, a deliberate pause that led directly to Legato’s founding rather than an immediate jump into another corporate role.
Steve Romine: The Co-Founder Who Ran Bose’s Hearing Aid Division
Trivedi co-founded Legato with Steve Romine, who ran Bose’s hearing aids division before going on to serve as chief operating officer at Audicus, a hearing care company. That combination, Trivedi’s audio-eyewear product experience paired with Romine’s direct experience running an actual hearing aid business, gave Legato a founding team spanning both sides of the exact problem the company set out to solve.
Both founders’ overlapping time at Bose, working on genuinely adjacent but distinct product categories, audio eyewear and hearing aids, mirrors a pattern seen among founding teams whose complementary expertise stems from parallel work inside the same larger organization rather than entirely separate career paths.
The Problem Legato Set Out to Solve
Hearing loss affects an estimated 50 million adults in the United States, but only about 20% of those with diagnosed hearing loss actually address it, according to the company’s funding announcement. Trivedi has attributed that gap directly to the design of hearing aids themselves. “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,” he said.
Trivedi has also framed the stakes in terms that go beyond simple audio quality. “Hearing, at first glance, it’s not so much just like ‘I want to hear the TV better.’ It’s really about connection,” he told TechCrunch. “When you hear better, you connect to the world. It reduces dementia risk and depression risk.” That framing positions Legato’s product as addressing broader health and social outcomes tied to untreated hearing loss, not simply improving audio clarity for its own sake.
Building Legato: AI Hearing Glasses Instead of Hearing Aids
Legato’s debut product, Legato Frames, integrates patented hearing-assistance technology directly into the arms of conventional-looking eyeglasses, rather than requiring a separate, visible hearing aid device. The company describes Legato Frames as the world’s first AI-powered hearing glasses, a characterization that comes directly from the company’s own announcement rather than an independently verified industry ranking, worth noting given how new and rapidly evolving the hearing-enabled eyewear category currently is.
The product is positioned to launch as an over-the-counter hearing aid later this fall, meaning consumers would be able to purchase it without a prescription, following the regulatory pathway that has opened up the broader OTC hearing aid market in recent years. That positioning targets specifically the discomfort and visible-medical-device stigma Trivedi has identified as the core barrier keeping most people with hearing loss from seeking help at all.
Inside Legato’s $12 Million Funding Round
Legato emerged from stealth on August 26, 2026, with $12 million in funding from Neotribe Ventures, Listen, and Village Global. Neotribe Ventures, founded in 2017 by longtime NEA general partner Kittu Kolluri, manages more than $480 million across multiple funds and invests in early- to growth-stage companies.
According to TechCrunch, Legato’s funding has gone largely toward product development and marketing efforts as the company prepares for its fall product launch, reflecting a company moving deliberately from stealth-mode development directly into a specific, near-term commercial release rather than an extended additional research phase.
The Investors Backing Mehul Trivedi
Neotribe Ventures leading Legato’s round brings a firm with a specific track record backing bold, technically ambitious founders across a range of categories, while Listen’s participation suggests investor interest with specific relevance to the audio and hearing technology space Legato operates within. Village Global rounds out a syndicate combining both technically focused and broader early-stage venture participation.
That combination of investors, rather than a single generalist lead, suggests a round assembled with some deliberate attention to both Legato’s specific hearing-health category and its broader consumer hardware ambitions as the company heads toward its first commercial product launch.
Legato’s Position in the Hearing Technology Race
Legato enters a hearing technology market valued at roughly $15 billion globally, competing against both traditional hearing aid manufacturers and a growing number of over-the-counter hearing aid entrants that emerged following regulatory changes that opened that category to non-prescription sales. Its specific differentiation is the eyewear form factor itself, positioning hearing assistance as an extension of glasses people already wear rather than a separate, visible medical device.
That positioning carries both an opportunity and a real constraint: eyeglasses are already a near-universal wearable for a large share of the population with hearing loss, but building hearing-assistance technology that performs reliably while embedded in conventional-looking eyewear, rather than a purpose-built hearing aid form factor, is a genuinely difficult engineering problem the company will need to prove out as it approaches its fall launch.
What’s Next for Legato
With fresh funding secured, Legato’s near-term priority is launching Legato Frames as an over-the-counter hearing aid this fall, the company’s first real test of whether its eyewear-based approach can attract the roughly 80% of people with diagnosed hearing loss who have so far avoided seeking treatment. The company’s continued positioning around stigma reduction, rather than pure audio performance claims, suggests its marketing and product design will likely keep emphasizing everyday wearability over clinical hearing aid framing.
Given the size of the underlying addressable population, tens of millions of adults with untreated hearing loss, Legato’s success will likely depend heavily on how convincingly it can demonstrate that its eyewear-embedded technology performs as well as, or close enough to, dedicated hearing aid devices to justify the category shift it’s proposing.
Lessons for Entrepreneurs From Mehul Trivedi’s Journey
Trivedi’s path offers a few clear lessons for founders building products at the intersection of two previously separate categories. First, his direct experience building Bose Frames and later working on Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses at EssilorLuxottica gave him firsthand understanding of how to design genuinely wearable consumer hardware at scale, expertise directly transferable to Legato’s core engineering challenge. Second, partnering specifically with Romine, whose background running Bose’s hearing aids division and later serving as Audicus’s COO gave him deep operational experience in the hearing care industry itself, filled a knowledge gap that Trivedi’s own audio-eyewear background alone would not have covered.
Third, framing Legato’s mission around social connection and broader health outcomes, rather than narrower audio performance metrics, reflects a deliberate positioning choice likely aimed at overcoming the stigma the founders identified as the central barrier keeping most people with hearing loss from seeking any treatment at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Mehul Trivedi? Mehul Trivedi is the co-founder and CEO of Legato, a hearing technology startup. He previously led the creation of Bose Frames at Bose and worked on smart eyewear, including Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, at EssilorLuxottica.
What does Legato do? Legato builds Legato Frames, hearing-assistance technology integrated into the arms of conventional-looking eyeglasses, designed to launch as an over-the-counter hearing aid alternative to traditional hearing aid devices.
How much funding has Legato raised? Legato raised $12 million in funding, announced August 26, 2026, from Neotribe Ventures, Listen, and Village Global, when the company emerged from stealth.
Who co-founded Legato with Mehul Trivedi? Legato was co-founded by Mehul Trivedi and Steve Romine. Romine previously ran Bose’s hearing aids division and later served as chief operating officer at Audicus, a hearing care company.
When will Legato Frames be available? Legato says it expects to begin selling Legato Frames as an over-the-counter hearing aid later in fall 2026.
Where is Legato based? Legato is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and was founded in 2024.
Conclusion
Mehul Trivedi Legato represents a founder applying hard-won consumer hardware expertise from Bose and Meta’s smart glasses program to one of hearing health’s most persistent adoption problems: not whether hearing assistance technology works, but whether people are willing to actually wear it. With $12 million in funding, a founding team spanning both audio eyewear design and hearing aid industry operations, and a fall launch approaching for Legato Frames, the company is testing whether embedding hearing assistance into ordinary-looking glasses can reach the roughly 40 million Americans with hearing loss who have so far avoided treatment altogether.
For more founder stories in consumer health hardware and wearable technology, see Jenny Duan’s Clair Health, Nadav Grossinger’s Elio, and Colin Webb’s Avatar Robotics on Denote Press.
