Aina, a new startup co-founded by Apoorv Shankar, formerly the Vice President of Hardware at smart ring maker Ultrahuman, has successfully secured $5.5 million in a recent funding round. The Bengaluru and San Francisco-based company is focused on developing a new generation of human-computer interface devices that empower users to actively control AI agents, rather than merely capturing ambient data.
The investment round was spearheaded by Redstart Labs (Info Edge India) and 360 ONE, with additional contributions from MIXI Global Investments, Antler, and Blume Founders Fund. Notably, individual investors such as newly appointed WhatsApp head Kunal Shah, Razorpay co-founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, and Scribd founder Tikhon Bernstam also participated, underscoring the perceived potential of Aina's vision.
Shankar, who previously founded LazyCo – a hardware interface design startup acquired by Ultrahuman – expressed his enthusiasm for the evolving AI interface landscape. He left Ultrahuman last year, driven by a desire to innovate in a sector he believes is ripe for disruption, having observed existing devices like Rabbit and Humane Pin with a critical eye, yet acknowledging their role in popularising new interfaces.
Aina's initial product, Dune, is a compact, three-key, context-aware 'macro' keyboard designed to run pre-set shortcuts and control features like microphones and cameras during meetings. The company also developed Radiance, a tabletop remote for video calls, and Shift, a single-tap 'agentic' button for triggering AI agents to perform repeated tasks. However, early user feedback indicated Dune's popularity, leading Aina to bundle features from its other prototypes into the keypad, prioritising its launch to gather real-world insights into user automation needs.
Looking ahead, Aina plans to leverage insights from all three devices for its next product. While specific details remain under wraps, the company has confirmed that it will not be a passive 'context capture' gadget, like many existing wearables that simply record surroundings. Instead, the new device, which will begin testing with a small group of users in the coming weeks, is engineered to be action-oriented, designed to invoke and control AI agents and streamline workflows by utilising existing context from phones and laptops.