Aina raises $5.5 million to build AI agent controllers

Aina, a hardware startup based in Bengaluru and San Francisco previously known as Project Mirage, has raised $5.5 million in a funding round co-led by Redstart Labs (associated with Infoedge, India) and 360 ONE. The startup builds physical interfaces designed to control and trigger AI agents. The round also drew:

• Institutional participants MIXI Global Investments, Antler, and Blume Founders Fund
• Individual investors WhatsApp head Kunal Shah, Razorpay co-founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, and Scribd founder Tikhon Bernstam

Founded by Apoorv Shankar, a former VP of Hardware at smart ring maker Ultrahuman, Aina’s first product is Dune, a three-key, context-aware macro keyboard — a small keypad that runs pre-set shortcuts. The company also developed two other devices: Radiance, a tabletop remote for video calls, and Shift, a single-tap agentic button — a physical button that triggers an AI agent to carry out a repeated task — but chose to ship Dune first. Before Ultrahuman, Shankar ran LazyCo, a hardware interface design startup that Ultrahuman later acquired, bringing him in-house before he struck out on his own again. Shankar left Ultrahuman last year, saying he was drawn to the emerging field of AI interfaces after being disappointed with earlier devices in the category.

Unlike passive context-capture devices — gadgets that simply record ambient audio to feed into AI — Aina plans to begin testing a new device with a small group of select users in the coming weeks, one designed to trigger workflows and control AI agents directly. As Shankar put it: “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.”

The funding arrives amid a broader push for AI-focused hardware. This week, OpenAI released a custom keypad for its Codex coding tool, and the company is reportedly developing a smart speaker with a built-in AI assistant. Qualcomm says it is experimenting with more than 40 devices to interact with AI.

Why it matters

The funding underscores a growing race among startups and tech giants to build hardware interfaces specifically designed to control and trigger AI agents, rather than devices that only passively capture context.