Ultrahuman's former hardware VP raises $5.5M for devices that control AI agents
Aina, a startup founded by ex-Ultrahuman hardware VP Apoorv Shankar, has raised $5.5 million to build action-oriented devices that control AI agents rather than just passively record. Its first product is Dune, a context-aware macro keypad.
A new player in the AI interface race
Bengaluru and San Francisco-based startup Aina (meaning 'mirror' in Hindi) has announced a $5.5 million funding round led by Redstart Labs (Infoedge, India) and 360 ONE, with participation from MIXI Global Investments, Antler, and Blume Founders Fund. Individual investors include newly appointed WhatsApp head Kunal Shah, Razorpay co-founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, and Scribd founder Tikhon Bernstam.
The company was founded by Apoorv Shankar, former VP of Hardware at smart ring maker Ultrahuman. Prior to that, he ran LazyCo, a hardware interface design startup that created gadgets like a ring for controlling smartphones. Ultrahuman later acquired LazyCo, bringing Shankar in-house before he left to start Aina. Shankar told TechCrunch he left Ultrahuman due to his curiosity about AI interfaces and disappointment with devices like Rabbit and Humane Pin.
First product: Dune
Aina's first product is Dune, a three-key, context-aware macro keyboard that can control microphone and camera functions during meetings and run shortcuts based on the active app. The startup also developed two other devices: Radiance, a desktop remote for video calls with a dial for volume and buttons for mic, camera, AI notetaker, voice modulation, and joining meetings; and Shift, a single-tap 'agentic' button that triggers an AI agent for repetitive tasks. However, early testing showed Dune was the most popular, so Aina decided to ship it first, bundling features from the other two devices.
Future direction
Aina plans to use insights from all three devices to develop its next product, details of which remain undisclosed. Shankar hinted that the new device won't be a passive context-capture gadget but an action-oriented device built to control and invoke AI agents. 'You have enough context in your phone and laptop all the time, and we haven't even started using that well. We are building an action-oriented device that will use the context to help you control and trigger workflows,' he said. As more developers adopt AI coding tools like Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex, hardware for controlling agents is proliferating. OpenAI recently released a custom keypad for Codex made with Work Louder. With no clear winner yet in form factor – ring, pin, glasses, keypad, or speaker – a wave of new hardware bets and funding rounds is expected.
