Aina: An AI native interface that knows what you want

Apoorv Shankar has been obsessed with hardware for as long as he can remember. He spent much of the past decade at Ultrahuman, the company behind the health and wellness rings worn by millions of consumers, learning how to take a hardware idea from prototype to mass adoption. Now he's aiming at something far bigger: rethinking the interface between humans and computers altogether.

"Aina's innovation could prove to be as groundbreaking and transformative as the launch of the iPhone." - Forbes

In 2026, Shankar's startup Aina announced $5.5 million in funding to build hardware for the AI era. His argument is simple but ambitious: the AI revolution so far has been a software revolution, and the interfaces we use to access it — keyboards, mice, touchscreens — were never designed for a world where we're asking machines to execute complex, multi-step tasks across a string of apps at once. "We need a new interface designed specifically for the way we use phones and computers today," he says. "That's what we've set out to do."

A new layer between people and machines

‍Aina's first product, Dune, is a small device built around just three keys. Rather than making users navigate through menus and windows, Dune interacts directly with the software someone is working in and surfaces common instructions through a far simpler physical interface. It's a first step toward what Shankar calls a "context-aware layer" — one that reduces the cognitive load of constantly figuring out what to do next. "Today's interfaces put everything in front of you and ask you to figure out what you need," he says. "When you're doing hundreds of tasks a day, every moment spent navigating instead of acting adds up to real cognitive load."

It's a thesis with big historical company. As 360 ONE's head of venture capital, Abhishek Nag, puts it: “every leap in computing has demanded a new hardware interface — punch cards, the GUI, the smartphone — and AI agents may be the next leap that forces a new one into existence.”

Betting against the giants

‍Shankar isn't shying away from the scale of the challenge, or the competition. OpenAI has brought in Jony Ive, the designer behind the iPhone, to build its own next generation of AI hardware, and recently launched a new voice model that OpenAI's team has described as a step toward voice becoming a primary interface for computing. Aina is a much smaller player going up against some of the best-resourced companies in tech. Shankar says that's exactly what makes it worth doing. "I'm excited that we have an opportunity to build something which potentially puts us in the same league as those competitors," he says. "If we get it right, we'll be legendary."

From CES to a pilot, via Antler

Aina used this year's CES in Las Vegas to show three experimental interface directions publicly for the first time, followed shortly after by the unveiling of Dune. The company is now inviting people to join a waitlist for its next interface — details of which Shankar is keeping close to the vest, beyond confirming it builds on the same context-based approach pioneered with Dune. A pilot scheme is due to launch before the end of the year, and Aina is already equipping a small-scale production facility at its offices in Bangalore to support it.

Antler's Embark program played a role in getting Aina to this point, particularly in sharpening its approach to the US market. "Sales in the US is a different game — the bar's just higher," says Shankar. "Before Embark, we had zero public presence. Now we've shown up at CES, gotten picked up by Wired, and started actually being seen. Being in that room with founders who'd already cracked this market — some who'd built $500M businesses from almost zero — changed how we think about launching here."

The $5.5 million round was led by Redstart Labs and 360 ONE, with participation from MIXI Global Investments, Antler, Blume Founders Fund, and several angel investors. Redstart Labs investor Vibhore Sharma frames the opportunity as a shift in the basic relationship between people and their tools: "We inherited the assumption that computers are tools — that you instruct, and they execute — but AI is quietly dissolving that line. That's where new categories like Aina are born."

Whether Aina can turn that thesis into something as ubiquitous as the keyboard it hopes to replace is still an open question. But with funding secured, a pilot on the calendar, and a growing waitlist, the company is now in a position to find out.

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