Ultrahuman’s former hardware VP raises $5.5M for devices that control AI agents, not just record you

Aina developed two other devices: Radiance, a tabletop remote for video calls with a dial for volume and buttons for mic, camera, AI notetaker, voice modulation, and joining the meeting; and Shift, a single-tap “agentic” button — press it once, and it triggers an AI agent to carry out a repeated task — that connects to your phone.

But in early testing, Aina found Dune was the most popular of the three and realized it could bundle features of the other two devices into the keypad. That signal from users is why the company decided to ship Dune first. It wants to learn, in the wild, what kind of tasks users actually want to automate.

Aina said lessons from all three devices will feed into its next product. The company isn’t revealing details of its new device yet, but plans to begin testing with a small group of select users in the coming weeks.

Shankar hinted that the new device won’t be a passive “context capture” gadget — the kind of always-listening ring or Plaud-style meeting notetaker that just records what’s happening around you — but rather a device built to control and invoke agents.

“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.

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

There are also reports that OpenAI is developing a smart speaker with a built-in AI assistant, and Rabbit R1 has positioned itself as another device for invoking AI agents. Qualcomm, meanwhile, says it’s experimenting with more than 40 devices to interact with AI. With no clear winner yet on form factor — ring, pin, glasses, keypad, or speaker — expect a wave of new hardware bets, and funding rounds, chasing the same question: What does controlling AI actually look like?