Sandbar bets on a vocal ring to revolutionize wearable AI

Sandbar bets on a vocal ring to revolutionize portable AI

Sandbar believes its vocal ring can avoid the graveyard of AI hardware. AI-assisted note-taking hardware has surged in recent years, with devices the size of credit cards, pendants, pins, and even transcription earbuds, all promising to capture your meetings and transform them into summaries and action items. Today, a new wave of wearable devices—particularly rings—bets that people want to capture fleeting thoughts and ideas in the same way.

One of the companies betting on this trend is Sandbar, the startup behind the private vocal ring Stream, which has raised $36 million to date, including $23 million in a Series A led by Adjacent and Kindred Ventures.

In this episode of the TechCrunch Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan speaks with Mina Fahmi, co-founder and CEO of Sandbar, about why he believes so many vocal hardware devices before Stream struggled to gain traction, and why he bets that keeping humans firmly in control is essential for the success of portable technology.

Listen to the full episode to learn more about:

• Why Fahmi designed Stream to be push-to-talk rather than always on, and what he thinks "social acceptability" means for portable AI.

• How Fahmi's time at CTRL-labs, the neural interface startup acquired by Meta in 2019, influenced his thinking on human input.

• Why Sandbar chose the "extremely painful" path of building entirely custom hardware rather than modifying a standard device.

• What Fahmi believes it will take for vocal wearable devices to move beyond tech enthusiast circles and reach the mainstream.