Sandbar secures $23M Series A for its AI note-taking ring

Sandbar, a startup founded by former Meta employees, has raised $23M in a Series A round led by Adjacent and Kindred Ventures for its Stream smart ring. The ring focuses on AI-powered voice note-taking rather than health tracking, featuring a proximity-tuned microphone activated by a touch panel. Users lift their hand to their face to record notes, chat with an AI assistant, or control media playback. Pre-orders have sold out twice, and the company plans to ship this summer. Sandbar intends to expand its software and ML teams, build a web platform, reduce model latency, and eventually enable agentic workflows. The AI note-taking hardware category is growing, with competitors like Plaud, Pebble, and Taya also targeting the space.