rewrite this title AI Wearable Startup Sandbar Raises $23M for Voice Note-Taking Ring – UC Today

AI wearable startup Sandbar has raised $23 million in Series A funding as it prepares to launch a voice-enabled smart ring designed to help users capture ideas, organise notes, and interact with artificial intelligence on the go.

The New York-based company announced the funding this week, with the round led by Adjacent and Kindred Ventures.

The investment brings Sandbar’s total funding to $36 million following a $10 million seed round led by True Ventures in early 2025 and a $3 million pre-seed round backed by Upfront Ventures and Betaworks in 2024.

Sandbar plans to use the new funding to expand its engineering and product teams and accelerate development of its first device, the Stream ring, ahead of a planned summer 2026 launch.

The company describes Stream as a wearable conversational interface that combines a hardware ring with AI-powered software to help users think through ideas, capture notes, and retrieve information without relying on a smartphone.

“We believe in self augmentation in an agentic world,” said Mina Fahmi, co-founder and CEO of Sandbar.

“With the right interface, everyone should be able to develop ideas and get things done wherever they are, with the speed, privacy, and ease of thinking.”

A Ring Designed for Voice Interaction

The Stream ring integrates a touchpad, personal microphone, and haptic feedback system into a compact wearable form factor.

Users activate the microphone by holding the touch panel, allowing them to record notes, ask questions, or interact with the device’s AI-powered interface.

Those interactions are then processed through a companion mobile application that organises recorded content, retrieves information from the web, and generates responses using multiple AI models.

According to Sandbar, the system is designed to allow users to capture thoughts and build on ideas without interrupting their workflow.

The device differs from traditional voice assistants by requiring users to deliberately activate the microphone. Instead of listening continuously for a wake word, Stream only records when the touch panel is pressed.

“Unlike AI companions, Stream is designed without an identity of its own,” the company said in a statement.

“It remembers what you share, listens only when you hold the button to speak — even at a whisper — and uses multiple AI models to organise, respond, and search the web in real time.”

The company says this approach is intended to give users more control over when audio is captured while keeping interactions quick and unobtrusive.

From Neural Interfaces to AI Hardware

Sandbar was founded by Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong, who previously worked together at CTRL-labs, a neural interface startup acquired by Meta in 2019.

At CTRL-labs, the pair worked on technology designed to translate human intent into digital actions, including research that contributed to Meta’s neural wristband projects.

That experience helped shape Sandbar’s focus on building new interfaces for interacting with computing systems more naturally.

The company currently employs around 15 people with backgrounds in consumer technology and product design. Team members have previously worked on devices including the iPhone, Vision Pro, Fitbit, and Kindle.

Sandbar has also brought in several new senior hires as it prepares for launch, including Sam Bowen as vice president of hardware and Brooke Travis as vice president of marketing.

Entering a Growing AI Wearables Market

Sandbar’s Stream ring enters an increasingly active market for AI-powered hardware designed to capture spoken information and support conversational interaction with digital assistants.

Advances in generative AI and speech recognition have prompted a wave of startups to explore new device categories built specifically for AI interaction.

Some companies are focusing on dedicated note-taking devices capable of recording meetings and generating summaries. Others are experimenting with wearable formats that integrate microphones and sensors into accessories such as pins, glasses, and rings.

Smart rings, in particular, have grown in popularity in recent years, primarily as health and wellness devices that track sleep, activity, and biometrics.

Sandbar’s device takes a different approach by focusing on voice interaction and idea capture rather than health data.

By turning the ring into a voice interface for AI, the company hopes to make it easier for users to record thoughts, brainstorm ideas, and access information while moving through their day.

Preparing for Launch

Sandbar plans to launch a closed beta program in the coming months to refine the Stream software experience before the hardware ships later this year.

The beta will also introduce a feature called Inner Voice, which the company says will allow the system to respond using a voice personalized to the user.

Pre-orders for the Stream ring are already open, with early demand reportedly strong. According to the company, the first batch of pre-orders has sold out, with a second batch now available ahead of the summer shipping window.

With fresh funding secured and development underway, Sandbar is betting that wearable AI interfaces could represent a new direction in how people interact with technology, enabling faster and more natural ways to capture ideas and engage with artificial intelligence throughout the day.