Whisper into this AI-powered smart ring to organize your thoughts

Everyone has a inner monologue. When you take the train, ride a bike, or shower, chances are you’re thinking about the day ahead, the tasks you need to accomplish, or maybe you’re just thinking about a conversation you had the day before. Much of this stays in our brains, only to be quickly forgotten or pushed aside when the train pulls into the station. But what if you could subtly record it all in one place, ready to digest later?

That’s what a new company called Sandbar is planning for Stream Ring, an AI-powered smart ring. The company came out of stealth today after two years of development, led by co-founders Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong. Both previously worked at CTRL-Labs, then at Meta when Mark Zuckerberg’s company acquired the neural interface startup. He raised $13 million in venture capital.

A “mouse for voice”

The hardware is Stream Ring, a smart ring that you wear on your index finger. Raise your hand and speak in the ring, and you can even whisper in crowded areas if you don’t want others to hear you. It does not record any audio of your interactions with the ring; instead, just like most AI-powered wearables on the market today, it transcribes your words into text, which you can access in the Stream app.

“We think of this as a mouse for voice, because it solves many of the challenges of having a voice interaction at once,” Fahmi tells me in a nondescript office in Manhattan. “We imagine it primarily away from the phone, with the headphones it allows you to interact immediately without a wake word.”

There’s a capacitive sensor on the flat edge of the ring, and a long press lets you record your thoughts without being interrupted by an AI assistant. If the assistant responds to you, a simple tap on the sensor will mute it. The gear will be waterproof upon launch, so you won’t have to worry about using it in the rain or on sweaty days.

The Stream also doubles as a media controller, meaning you can tap it once to play or pause music, tap twice for the next track, or swipe your finger to control the volume. If for some reason Sandbar crashes and its AI backend goes offline, you’ll at least be left with a very expensive media controller, rather than hardware that quickly turns into electronic waste. Currently, there are no health tracking features like those found on most smart rings.