A raft of voice-based {hardware} gadgets have emerged, geared toward companionship, productiveness, or private development. These embrace card-shaped gadgets from Plaud and Pocket; pendants from Pal, Limitless, and Taya; and a wristband from Bee, which is now a part of Amazon.
Now, two former Meta staff who labored on interface design have launched Sandbar, a startup that has created a hoop referred to as Stream for related functions. The corporate calls the ring “a mouse for voice” as a result of it will possibly take notes, enable you work together with an AI assistant, and likewise allow you to management music.
Sandbar’s CEO, Mina Fahmi, has an intensive background in designing human-computer interfaces. He labored at Bryan Johnson’s Kernel and later at sensible glasses startup Magic Leap. Kirak Hong, Sandbar’s CTO, labored at Google earlier than becoming a member of CTRL-Labs, the place the duo met. Meta acquired the startup in 2019, and its work finally led to neural interfaces for the tech large’s sensible wearables.
Fahmi stated that when massive language fashions began rising a couple of years in the past, he constructed an experimental journaling app. Nevertheless, he discovered that the app itself grew to become a barrier to capturing his ideas. Given his expertise constructing {hardware} interfaces, he started exploring a conversational {hardware} interface as an alternative.
“Plenty of my concepts bubble up once I’m strolling or once I’m commuting, and I don’t wish to pull out my telephone to interrupt that second. I don’t wish to shout into my earbuds the place the world can hear me to speak via an concept. Kirak and I had been attempting to know what it might take to really seize a thought the second it bubbles up. That’s how we got here up with Stream,” Fahmi advised TechCrunch in an interview.
The ring, designed to be worn in your dominant hand’s index finger, has microphones and a contact pad.
In a digital demo, Fahmi wore the Stream ring on his index finger and recorded his ideas by urgent and holding the touchpad. By default, the microphone is off, activating solely with this gesture. The microphone proved delicate sufficient to choose up whispers and transcribe them within the companion iOS app. Different apps like Wispr Move and Willow equally enable folks to seize their ideas quietly.
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
Stream’s app contains an AI chatbot that converses with you as you report your ideas. You’ll be able to set up these into separate notes that both you or the AI can edit. The app additionally enables you to pinch to zoom out and overview what you could have mentioned over days or perhaps weeks. Sandbar has added a personalization layer so the assistant’s voice sounds considerably just like the consumer’s.
Fahmi stated that in crowded areas, customers can put on headphones to converse privately with the assistant. With out headphones, the ring supplies haptic suggestions when it efficiently registers a word, permitting you so as to add to-dos, take notes, or verify objects off a grocery listing quietly.
Past voice capabilities, the ring’s flat floor doubles as a media controller, permitting you to play, pause, skip tracks and modify quantity. Whereas many headphones provide related controls, the ring might show helpful when your fingers are occupied otherwise you’re in transit.
The corporate is opening up pre-orders for Stream on Wednesday at $249 for the silver model and $299 for gold. Sandbar goals to start delivery subsequent summer time. A Professional subscription tier — free for 3 months for many who preorder, then $10 per thirty days — gives limitless chats, notes, and early entry to new options.
Fahmi stated the corporate provides customers full management over their knowledge at any tier, with encryption each at relaxation and in transit. He added that Sandbar doesn’t imagine in walled gardens and plans to help knowledge exports to apps like Notion.
Sandbar has raised $13 million in funding from True Ventures, Upfront Ventures, and Betaworks.
Toni Schneider, a associate at True Ventures, stated he had been skeptical of AI gadgets, as demos he’d seen earlier than Stream weren’t spectacular.
“I feel lots of people would agree that voice and AI go very well collectively. And [they also agree] that having a telephone or perhaps a laptop computer to work together with AI is type of quite a bit when all you want is voice. So there must be some type of new kind issue on the market. We checked out loads of them, and loads of them simply didn’t fairly hit the goal. When Mina got here in and confirmed us the demo, it made sense to us,” he advised TechCrunch.
Competitors is fierce within the voice-AI {hardware} house, with many builders exploring rings as a kind issue. Fahmi stated he doesn’t need Stream to be an assistant or a companion, however somewhat an interface for customers to precise their concepts whereas sustaining full management.
AI {hardware} has but to attain mainstream success. Humane bought to HP, Rabbit is making an attempt to enhance consumer expertise and engagement via software program updates, and Pal is attempting to leverage consumer backlash to gasoline development. Sandbar might want to show that its ring kind issue gives real comfort and worth that pendants, pins, or wristbands can’t.
