The Aina AI interface funding of $5.5 million closes a seed round for a startup that wants to do something most of its rivals do not: give users physical hardware that controls AI agents rather than simply recording what happens around them.
The round was led by Redstart Labs, the deeptech and SaaS-focused venture arm of Infoedge India, and 360 ONE, the alternative asset management business of financial services firm 360 ONE. MIXI Global Investments, Antler, and Blume Founders Fund also participated, as did angel investor Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital. Individual backers include Kunal Shah, the CRED founder who has since been appointed head of WhatsApp; Razorpay co-founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar; and Scribd founder Tikhon Bernstam.
According to YourStory, the capital will be used to bring Aina’s flagship product to market, expand its engineering and product teams, and scale operations across its dual bases in Bengaluru and San Francisco.
From a Stealth Lab to the Aina AI Interface
The company spent its first year operating quietly as Project Mirage, functioning as a human-computer interaction research lab studying how people actually use AI day-to-day. That research grounding shapes everything Aina has built since.
Aina was founded by Apoorv Shankar, whose background in hardware interfaces runs deeper than most. He previously ran LazyCo, a hardware interface design startup, alongside co-founder Yogansh Namdeo. The product that caught attention was what Moneycontrol described as the Aina ring wearable, a ring that let users control other devices. Ultrahuman, the smart ring maker, acquired LazyCo and brought both founders in-house to lead hardware product development. At the time of that acquisition, Athletech News reported that Ultrahuman had raised $25 million to date.
Shankar eventually left to pursue the AI interface question on his own. ‘I left Ultrahuman last year because I was just super curious about the space of AI interfaces,’ he said. ‘Devices like Rabbit and Humane Pin had launched, and I had my own disappointments with them. However, I was just excited that we are seeing interfaces being a thing now. And as an engineer turned product designer, this was the hottest thing I could imagine myself building.’
Three Devices, One Surviving Product, and What Comes Next
Aina developed three devices in parallel. Dune is a three-key, context-aware keypad that runs pre-set shortcuts, controls microphone and camera in a meeting, and executes scripts based on whichever application a user has open. Radiance is a tabletop remote for video calls, with a dial for volume and dedicated buttons for mic, camera, AI notetaker, voice modulation, and joining meetings. Shift is a single-tap button that connects to a user’s phone and triggers an AI agent to execute a repeated task.
Early testing settled the question of which product to ship first. Dune attracted the most users, and Aina concluded it could absorb the key functions of Radiance and Shift into the keypad. The company is now shipping Dune to learn what tasks people actually want to automate when the hardware is in their hands.
A second device is already in development, though Aina is not disclosing its form factor yet. Testing with a select group is expected to begin within weeks. Shankar was direct about its direction: it will not be a passive context-capture device. ‘I think you have enough context, you have in your phone and your 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.
That framing sets Aina apart from a crowded cohort of wearables and ambient recorders, including the Sandbar ring, Plaud’s AI pin and notetaker, Bee, and Friend, all of which centre on capturing what a user says or hears. Aina’s bet is that the more useful problem is invocation: getting AI to act on instructions rather than just accumulate them.
The broader market is moving in that direction too. OpenAI this week released a custom keypad for its Codex agent, made with Work Louder. Qualcomm says it is experimenting with more than 40 devices designed to interact with AI. Redstart Labs, whose portfolio spans robotics and industrial AI, is placing Aina alongside bets on Unbox Robotics, BrainSight AI, and CynLr.
No form factor has pulled clear of the field. The question Aina is racing to answer, with a three-key keypad as its opening move, is whether the winning interface looks less like a gadget you wear and more like one you reach for.
