AI has become the smartphone industry's latest battleground, with manufacturers racing to add AI-powered features to attract mainstream consumers. Vertu is taking a different path. The UK-founded luxury phone maker, known for hand-finished devices often costing tens of thousands of dollars, sells status instead of specs. Its Alphafold, a foldable phone, targets affluent buyers, particularly chief executives, pairing luxury materials with an AI agent designed to automate parts of an executive's working day. At the heart of the Alphafold is Hermes Agent, a pre-installed AI agent built on top of the open-source Hermes project by Nous Research. Vertu says it can analyze files, automate tasks across apps, remember conversations, and hand off requests to a human concierge when needed. Unlike most smartphone AI assistants that largely just respond to prompts, Hermes is designed to execute multi-step workflows on users' behalf, making it the centerpiece of Vertu's pitch rather than the foldable hardware itself. The phone starts at $6,880, positioning it as a luxury item for executives who want AI assistance baked into their daily workflow.
Vertu Alphafold — A $6,880 Luxury Phone With Built-in AI Agent
updated at July 17, 2026