A group of former high-level Motorola executives and engineers is working on an ambitious Internet of Things startup that’s creating “invisible” wearables that fit discreetly into a person’s everyday apparel. The Chicago-based startup, called Jio, is in stealth mode, but CEO John Renaldi gave Chicago Inno a few early details on the project.

Jio, Renaldi says, is building “the next wave of wearables,” which the company refers to as “invisibles.” The device integrates into things that are already worn on a person’s body, like clothes and other accessories, and is so small that if you were looking at a person wearing it, you’d have no idea it was there.

Renaldi is vague on the specifics of Jio, but he said that it plans to go beyond fitness tracking and will be able to integrate into smart home systems.

“Wearables is a new category, but up until now it’s really been associated with the wrist,” he said. “And the problem with the wrist is it’s super visible. Anything outwardly visible like that is a fashion statement and subject to a massive amount of personal preference.”

“There’s just a lot of wearables you don’t want to wear.”

Jio wants to take style and personal preference out of wearables, and it wants to effortlessly make wearables part of a person’s everyday routine.

“There’s just a lot of wearables you don’t want to wear,” Renaldi said. “We think that technology should blend into the background and be really unnoticeable. When that happens, its usefulness will really start to shine.”

Renaldi joined Motorola as an intern in 2000 and worked his way up to VP of Global E-Commerce and Web Products, and was the architect behind the Moto Maker, Motorola’s online phone personalization feature.

Renaldi left Motorola last year when he got the startup bug and the idea for Jio. He began to quickly assemble an all-star team of former Motorola engineers, including Ed Marabotto, a senior director of engineering at Motorola who was the engineering lead behind the Moto E and Moto G phones. Renaldi also brought on Roger Ady, who spent more than two decades as the director of engineering at Motorola where he generated more than 35 patents and over 70 concepts and design solutions for the phone maker.

Jio, with a hardware team in Chicago and a software team in Silicon Valley, began last year in Chicago tech hub 1871 and has since moved into Catapult. Jio has raised around $200,000 so far and is still fundraising, and has grown its team to 10 people and is continuing to hire. It has also begun to establish a notable board of directors, including Lior Ron, who was the product lead for Google Maps, and Dennis Roberson, a Cleversafe board member and Vice Provost of IIT.

Renaldi says the startup incorporates low-powered beacon technology and creates a battery with 10x the life of the closest wearable device. Other areas of technology Jio will center around include contextual awareness, machine learning and mesh networking, Renaldi said.

It all sounds pretty vague at the moment, but the big-picture goal of Jio is to change the way we think about wearables, Renaldi said.

“For many demographics and a very large one that we’re very specifically looking at–and more to come about that in the future–they simply don’t want anything on the wrist every day,” Renaldi said.

While he wouldn’t go into detail on the specific demographic Jio is targeting, it’s possible that the startup could be going after wearables for children. It’s plausible that the technology could help parents better monitor and track their children throughout their house, and the device could communicate with a family’s smart home system (and images on Jio’s website and Twitter account both feature children).

There are plenty of unknowns as Jio continues to operate in stealth mode, but it’s clear the startup is tackling some big issues. And if they’re successful in developing a wearable that truly blends into the background and can stay charged better than current devices, Jio could be set to greatly change the wearable industry.

“You’re going to see (wearable technology) evolve away from the wrist,” he said. “Not everyone wants to wear a watch.”