AI wearable startup Sandbar has raised $23 million in Series A funding as it prepares to launch a voice-enabled smart ring designed to help users capture ideas, organise notes, and interact with artificial intelligence on the go.<\/p>\n
The New York-based company announced the funding this week, with the round led by Adjacent and Kindred Ventures.<\/p>\n
The investment brings Sandbar\u2019s total funding to $36 million following a $10 million seed round led by True Ventures in early 2025 and a $3 million pre-seed round backed by Upfront Ventures and Betaworks in 2024.<\/p>\n
Sandbar plans to use the new funding to expand its engineering and product teams and accelerate development of its first device, the Stream ring, ahead of a planned summer 2026 launch.<\/p>\n
The company describes Stream as a wearable conversational interface that combines a hardware ring with AI-powered software to help users think through ideas, capture notes, and retrieve information without relying on a smartphone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe in self augmentation in an agentic world,\u201d said Mina Fahmi, co-founder and CEO of Sandbar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the right interface, everyone should be able to develop ideas and get things done wherever they are, with the speed, privacy, and ease of thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Ring Designed for Voice Interaction<\/p>\n
The Stream ring integrates a touchpad, personal microphone, and haptic feedback system into a compact wearable form factor.<\/p>\n
Users activate the microphone by holding the touch panel, allowing them to record notes, ask questions, or interact with the device\u2019s AI-powered interface.<\/p>\n
Those interactions are then processed through a companion mobile application that organises recorded content, retrieves information from the web, and generates responses using multiple AI models.<\/p>\n
According to Sandbar, the system is designed to allow users to capture thoughts and build on ideas without interrupting their workflow.<\/p>\n
The device differs from traditional voice assistants by requiring users to deliberately activate the microphone. Instead of listening continuously for a wake word, Stream only records when the touch panel is pressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike AI companions, Stream is designed without an identity of its own,\u201d the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt remembers what you share, listens only when you hold the button to speak \u2014 even at a whisper \u2014 and uses multiple AI models to organise, respond, and search the web in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company says this approach is intended to give users more control over when audio is captured while keeping interactions quick and unobtrusive.<\/p>\n
From Neural Interfaces to AI Hardware<\/p>\n
Sandbar was founded by Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong, who previously worked together at CTRL-labs, a neural interface startup acquired by Meta in 2019.<\/p>\n
At CTRL-labs, the pair worked on technology designed to translate human intent into digital actions, including research that contributed to Meta\u2019s neural wristband projects.<\/p>\n
That experience helped shape Sandbar\u2019s focus on building new interfaces for interacting with computing systems more naturally.<\/p>\n
The company currently employs around 15 people with backgrounds in consumer technology and product design. Team members have previously worked on devices including the iPhone, Vision Pro, Fitbit, and Kindle.<\/p>\n
Sandbar has also brought in several new senior hires as it prepares for launch, including Sam Bowen as vice president of hardware and Brooke Travis as vice president of marketing.<\/p>\n
Entering a Growing AI Wearables Market<\/p>\n
Sandbar\u2019s Stream ring enters an increasingly active market for AI-powered hardware designed to capture spoken information and support conversational interaction with digital assistants.<\/p>\n
Advances in generative AI and speech recognition have prompted a wave of startups to explore new device categories built specifically for AI interaction.<\/p>\n
Some companies are focusing on dedicated note-taking devices capable of recording meetings and generating summaries. Others are experimenting with wearable formats that integrate microphones and sensors into accessories such as pins, glasses, and rings.<\/p>\n
Smart rings, in particular, have grown in popularity in recent years, primarily as health and wellness devices that track sleep, activity, and biometrics.<\/p>\n
Sandbar\u2019s device takes a different approach by focusing on voice interaction and idea capture rather than health data.<\/p>\n
By turning the ring into a voice interface for AI, the company hopes to make it easier for users to record thoughts, brainstorm ideas, and access information while moving through their day.<\/p>\n
Preparing for Launch<\/p>\n
Sandbar plans to launch a closed beta program in the coming months to refine the Stream software experience before the hardware ships later this year.<\/p>\n
The beta will also introduce a feature called Inner Voice, which the company says will allow the system to respond using a voice personalized to the user.<\/p>\n
Pre-orders for the Stream ring are already open, with early demand reportedly strong. According to the company, the first batch of pre-orders has sold out, with a second batch now available ahead of the summer shipping window.<\/p>\n
With fresh funding secured and development underway, Sandbar is betting that wearable AI interfaces could represent a new direction in how people interact with technology, enabling faster and more natural ways to capture ideas and engage with artificial intelligence throughout the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI wearable startup Sandbar has raised $23 million in Series A funding as it prepares to launch a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[366,111,139,69,145,5480],"class_list":{"0":"post-322754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-generative-ai","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-wearable-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}