Sandbar Secures $23 Million Series A for its AI Note-Taking Ring

Sandbar, an interface company based in NYC, led by Mina Fahmi, Kirak Hong, and the team, has raised $23 million in a Series A funding round led by Adjacent and Kindred Ventures. The company’s smart ring is designed for note-taking rather than health tracking, unlike products from Oura. It features a microphone that is off by default and a touch-sensitive panel on top to record notes, interact with an AI assistant via the phone app, and control media playback and volume.

Fahmi, formerly at startups including CTRL-Labs and Magic Leap, said Sandbar spent over two years developing the ring before exiting stealth last year after testing with friends and early adopters.

Fahmi said Sandbar is seeing strong early traction, with the first preorder batch selling out last year, and a second batch opened to meet demand. Some users reportedly use the ring over 50 times a day for tasks like planning presentations, trips, or meals.

Shipping is planned for this summer, with a focus on refining the app, improving the web platform, enhancing the user interface, reducing AI response latency, and eventually enabling agentic workflows to act on recorded notes.

Fahmi noted that Sandbar is adding conversational features to its app, allowing the AI assistant to answer questions about notes users didn’t fully record.

“Back-and-forth conversation is considered essential. Unlike many experiences where a single command is either transcribed or executed, such as with a smart speaker, Stream excels at iterative tasks that may start with a conversation or note editing and ideally expand into multi-turn interactions, allowing Claude Coding in a terminal while clarifications occur via voice,” Fahmi said.

Sandbar’s phone app currently works only with the Stream ring, though plans may allow access for users without it. The app also supports independent note-taking when the ring is charging or misplaced.

Sandbar currently employs 15 people with prior experience at companies such as Amazon, Fitbit, Equinox, Google, and Apple. The recent fundraising aims to double the software and machine learning teams and expand the marketing staff.

The market for hardware note-taking devices is expanding. Companies such as Plaud produce devices for capturing meeting notes, while Pebble plans to release an affordable $75 ring this year. Startups like Taya adopt a premium strategy, designing products as jewelry to appeal to a broader audience.

Adjacent’s Nico Wittenborn, an investor in voice-focused startups like Blinkist, says Sandbar’s Stream has a superior form factor. Lifting the hand to take a note signals a private use case, unlike other devices that may record surroundings.

Wittenborn adds that much existing hardware targets only “tech bros,” while Sandbar’s form factor supports broader adoption.