Roughly 50 million adults in the U.S. experience hearing loss, yet only about 20% of those diagnosed actually pursue treatment. A new company called Legato is hoping to change that with an innovative twist on eyewear. Their product, the Legato Frames, embeds patented hearing-assistance technology directly into the arms of glasses. The frames are slated to hit the market later this fall.

Legato was co-founded by Mehul Trivedi and Steve Romine, both of whom have deep roots in wearables and hearing care from their time at Bose. Trivedi was behind the creation of Bose Frames, while Romine headed up the hearing aids division. After leaving Bose, Trivedi moved to EssilorLuxottica, where he led smart eyewear initiatives and contributed to the Meta Ray-Bans project. Romine, meanwhile, went on to serve as COO at Audicus, a hearing care company. After years within large corporations, Trivedi stepped away to explore where hearing technology and smart eyewear could intersect. It was during this period that he discovered a technology he felt could bridge the two, prompting him to reach out to Romine. Together, they launched Legato in late 2024.

“It’s kind of a no-brainer that you go to an eye exam, you get your glasses, you wear your glasses, and you’re happy, and you do that for the rest of your life - and the idea of it being blurry again where you would just stop wearing them is not a consideration. I think that’s what we want to do with hearing: just make it something that people address and almost forget about.”

Legato is focusing on individuals with mild to moderate hearing loss, which the startup notes is the largest segment of the hearing-impaired population. From the outset, the company aimed to make hearing care more accessible by tackling the cost, comfort, and stigma often tied to traditional hearing aids. To that end, Legato prioritized keeping the glasses as compact and lightweight as possible, developing a proprietary acoustic system, signal-processing stack, and mechanical architecture to pull it off.

Conventional hearing aids typically rely on directional microphones to pick up sounds from a specific direction—effective in quiet settings but less so in noisy places like restaurants. Legato takes a different route, using an AI-powered system that distinguishes between background noise and speech, amplifying only voices. The objective is to make conversations clearer without the mentally exhausting listening experience some traditional aids can create. “We wanted to deliver an experience that was unique,” Trivedi said. “So a form factor that’s really discreet and looks normal. They’re meant to feel and look like regular glasses. And so, we want it to be a product that’s effortless, easy to use, with kind of no controls that you need to fiddle with, works everywhere, works throughout your day, doesn’t need a ton of configuration, and just delivers you better hearing.”

Even though the frames feature an open-ear design, sound isn’t leaked to those around you. A dual-speaker system directs audio toward the wearer while canceling out escaping sound, cutting it by 99% just a few inches from the ear.

Funding for the company comes from Neotribe Ventures, Listen, and Village Global, with the bulk of it going toward product development and marketing. “We have an opportunity to address a population with this product and build something that delivers without all the compromises of traditional hearing aids,” Trivedi said. “Hearing, at first glance, it’s not so much just like ‘I want to hear the TV better.’ It’s really about connection. When you hear better, you connect to the world. It reduces dementia risk and depression risk,” he continued. “There’s impactful hearing health factors associated with better hearing. We’ve got a product that lives on people for 16 hours that is trusted to help them with their hearing and their vision, and we’d love to continue helping them in every way we can.”

When the frames launch later this year, Legato says they’ll be available through select eye-care providers nationwide and will “cost a fraction” of traditional hearing aids. They may also be eligible for vision insurance when purchased through an eye-care clinic.