NEW YORK — Fortell, a hearing-tech startup, began selling its Fortell AI hearing aids this month for $6,800 through a single Park Avenue clinic after a limited, invite-only beta, Dec. 22, 2025. The company is betting that custom-silicon “speech separation” — on-device AI that teases voices out of noise — can finally make crowded conversations feel less like guesswork.
Fortell AI hearing aids step out of beta on Park Avenue
The rollout is intentionally narrow. Fortell is selling Fortell AI hearing aids only through its Park Avenue audiology clinic at 530 Park Ave., pairing the devices with hearing evaluations, in-person fittings and ongoing care — a clinic-first strategy that stands out in a market increasingly defined by online sales and app-based tuning.
That “one address, one waitlist” model is part of the attention. A WIRED feature described the product’s early access as a kind of whisper-network among wealthy older adults, with beta users including comedian Steve Martin and investor Henry Kravis. The magazine also reported the $6,800 price tag and said the clinic initially plans to handle only a few dozen customers a week.
Outside the U.S. tech press, The Standard similarly framed the launch as a single-location New York debut and said Fortell developed chip technology to run its neural-net approach inside a device that still looks like a conventional hearing aid.
What “custom-silicon speech separation” means for Fortell AI hearing aids
The core idea is less about amplifying everything and more about isolating what matters — especially in restaurants and group settings where traditional noise reduction can fall short. “What became clear is that what was needed is source separation,” Fortell chief scientific officer Igor Lovchinsky told WIRED, describing an effort to split mixed audio into “just speech and just noise.”
Doing that without making speech sound unnatural hinges on processing speed. “Your ear is very sensitive to latency,” Fortell CTO Andrew Casper told WIRED, which reported the company built a custom chip to run the model fast enough — around 10 milliseconds — to avoid the uncanny effect of delayed sound.
In product materials, Fortell says its Fortell AI hearing aids are prescription devices for adults with hearing loss, with an in-person fitting required before many follow-up adjustments shift to remote support. Fortell also says lab trials overseen with outside academic involvement showed improved speech comprehension in background noise — a claim that will face heavier scrutiny as the rollout expands beyond early adopters.
Why the launch matters in a market racing toward on-device AI
Fortell’s launch lands after years of mainstream hearing-aid makers pushing neural processing as the next frontier. In 2021, The Hearing Review covered the debut of Oticon More, which Oticon billed as a hearing aid with an on-board deep neural network intended to improve speech in noise.
In 2024, Reuters reported that Sonova launched a hearing aid platform using real-time AI to distinguish speech from background noise, underscoring how quickly premium hearing aids are becoming miniature AI computers.
At the same time, the market is splitting into two tracks: wider access at lower prices, and higher performance at the top end. The FDA’s over-the-counter hearing-aid category, which took effect in 2022, opened the door for adults with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss to buy certain devices without a prescription — a shift designed to make hearing help easier to get.
For now, Fortell AI hearing aids remain a Park Avenue product in both geography and positioning. The next test is whether Fortell can scale beyond Manhattan without losing the close-fitting model it argues makes its speech separation work outside a demo — and whether Fortell AI hearing aids can earn lasting trust from audiologists and consumers once the novelty fades.
