The race to build the next AI interface is packed with startups. Plaud’s Sandbar ring, AI pin and desktop notepad, and Pocket’s credit card-sized disks compete to capture what you say and do. Bee and Friend take the wearables route, while Meta Ray-Bans and Even Realities go for smart glasses. Now, a Bengaluru and San Francisco-based startup, Aina (“mirror” in Hindi), is trying to make its own mark in this crowded field of human-computer interface devices.

The company announced today that it has raised $5.5 million in a round led by Redstart Labs (Infoedge, 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 vice president of hardware at smart ring maker Ultrahuman. Before that, Shankar ran LazyCo, a hardware interface design startup that made devices, including a ring that allowed users to control other devices like a smartphone. Ultrahuman later acquired LazyCo, bringing Shankar into the company before he eventually returned to his own business.

“I left Ultrahuman last year because I was very curious about the AI ​​interfaces space,” Shankar told TechCrunch. “Devices like Rabbit and Humane Pin had been released, and I had my own disappointments with them. However, I was excited that we are now seeing interfaces as a reality. And as an engineer turned product designer, this was the best I could imagine building.”

The startup’s first product is Dune, a three-key context-sensitive “macro” keyboard (essentially a small keyboard that executes preset shortcuts) that can control the microphone and camera in a meeting and run shortcuts or scripts based on the app users are viewing.

Aina developed two other devices: Radiance, a tabletop remote control for video calls with a volume dial and buttons for microphone, camera, AI annotator, voice modulation, and meeting join; and Shift, a one-touch “agent” button (press it once and it activates an AI agent to perform a repeated 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 group features from the other two devices on the keyboard. That signal from users is why the company decided to ship Dune first. You want to learn, in the wild, what kinds of tasks users really want to automate.

Aina said the lessons from all three devices will be incorporated into its next product. The company has not yet revealed details of its new device, but plans to begin testing with a small group of select users in the coming weeks.

Shankar hinted that the new device will not be a passive “context capture” device (the kind of ring that always listens or a Plaud-style meeting recorder that simply records what is happening around it) but rather a device designed to control and summon 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 context to help you control and trigger workflows,” he said.

As more developers and knowledge workers adopt AI coding tools like Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, there has been a steady increase in hardware built specifically to control and activate those agents. Just this week, OpenAI released a custom keyboard for Codex built with Work Louder. There are plenty of other options too, from keyboard makers to DIY enthusiasts building their own macro controllers.

There are also reports that OpenAI is developing a smart speaker with an integrated AI assistant, and Rabbit R1 has been positioned as another device to summon AI agents. Meanwhile, Qualcomm says it is experimenting with more than 40 devices to interact with AI. With no clear winner yet in terms of form factor (ring, pin, glasses, keyboard or speaker), expect a wave of new hardware bets and funding rounds, chasing the same question: what is it really like to control AI?