The race to build the next AI interface is full of startups. Sandbar’s ring, Plaud’s AI pin and desk pad, and Pocket’s credit card-sized buttons all compete to record what you say and do. Bee and Friend follow the wearable route, while Meta Ray-Bans and Even Realities bet on smart glasses. Now, a startup based in Bengaluru and San Francisco, Aina (“mirror” in Hindi), is trying to make its own mark in this crowded field of human-computer interface devices.
The company today announced that it has raised $5.5 million in a round led by Redstart Labs (Info Edge India) and 360 ONE, with participation from MIXI Global Investments, Antler and Blume Founders Fund.
The round also attracted individual investors, including newly appointed WhatsApp chief Kunal Shah, Razorpay co-founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, and Scribd founder Tikhon Bernstam.
Aina, formerly known as Project Mirage, was founded by Apoorv Shankar, former VP of Hardware at smart ring maker Ultrahuman. Before that, Shankar ran LazyCo, a hardware interface design startup that made gadgets, including a ring that allowed users to control other devices, such as a smartphone. Ultrahuman later acquired LazyCo, bringing Shankar within the company, before eventually striking out again on his own.
“I left Ultrahuman last year because I was just curious about the AI interface space,” Shankar told TechCrunch. “Devices like the Rabbit and Humane Pin had come out, and I had my own frustrations with them. But I was excited to see interfaces being a thing now. And as an engineer turned product designer, this was the hottest thing I could imagine myself building.”
The startup’s first product is Dune, a three-key, context-aware “macro” keyboard — essentially a small keyboard that executes predefined shortcuts — that can control the microphone and camera in a meeting and execute shortcuts or scripts based on the app users are viewing.
Aina developed two other devices: Radiance, a desktop remote control for video calls with a volume dial and buttons for microphone, camera, AI notepad, voice modulation and meeting participation. and Shift, a one-touch “agent” button — press it once and it activates an AI agent to perform a repetitive task — that connects to your phone.
But in early testing, Aina found the Dune to be the most popular of the three and realized she could incorporate features from the other two devices into the keyboard. This signal from users is why the company decided to ship Dune first. He wants to know, in the wild, what kinds of tasks users really want to automate.
Aina said lessons from all three devices will feed into its next product. The company isn’t revealing details about its new device yet, but plans to begin testing it with a small group of select users in the coming weeks.
Shankar hinted that the new device won’t be a passive “ambient capture” gadget — the kind of always-listening ring or Plaud-style meeting notepad that just records what’s going on around you — but rather a device designed to control and invoke agents.
“I think you have enough context, you have it on your phone and on your laptop all the time, and we haven’t even begun to use it well. We’re building an action-oriented device that will use the environment to help you control and enable workflows,” he said.
As more developers and knowledge workers adopt AI coding tools like Claude Code and OpenAI Code, there is a steady increase in hardware built specifically to control and enable these agents. Just this week, OpenAI released a custom keyboard for Codex built with Work Louder. There are also many other options, ranging from keyboard manufacturers to DIY lovers creating their own macros.
There are also reports that OpenAI is developing a smart speaker with a built-in AI assistant, and the Rabbit R1 has been positioned as another device to invoke AI agents. Qualcomm, meanwhile, says it’s experimenting with more than 40 devices to interact with AI. With no clear winner yet in form factor — ring, pin, glasses, keyboard or speaker — expect a wave of new hardware bets and funding rounds, chasing the same question: What does AI control actually look like?
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