Sandbar, a startup by former Meta employees Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong, attracted much attention last year when it showed off its note-taking wearable, the Stream ring. The company has now raised $23 million in a Series A funding round led by Adjacent and Kindred Ventures.
The company’s smart ring is focused on note-taking, similar to products by Plaud or Omi, and not health-tracking like Oura’s products. The ring has a microphone that’s off by default, but can be activated using a flat, touch-sensitive panel at the top. You can hold this touch panel to record notes, chat with an AI assistant on the accompanying phone app, and access media controls like play, pause, skip tracks, and control the volume.
Notably, the mic on the ring seems to be tuned for proximity, so you have to lift your hand to your face in order to take notes.
Image Credits:Sandbar /
Fahmi, who previously worked at startups like CTRL-Labs and Magic Leap, said Sandbar has been working on the ring for over two years, before coming out of stealth last year following a testing phase with friends and early adopters.
“The response [to the launch] was a lot warmer than we expected, which is really encouraging and meaningful,” Fahmi told TechCrunch. “A lot of people said they could see themselves wearing this.”
Fahmi said the startup is seeing promising traction from its early users, with the first batch of pre-orders for the ring selling out last year, which spurred Sandbar to open up a second batch to meet demand. He said some users use the ring over 50 times a day for tasks like planning presentations, trips or meals.
The startup plans to start shipping the smart ring this summer. Sandbar said it is focusing on refining its app experience and what users can do with their recorded notes. The company is working on a web platform, improving its user interface, and reducing the latency of model responses. In the long term, the company wants to enable agentic workflows to enable users to take action using their notes.
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