Bengaluru and San Francisco-based startup Aina, formerly known as Project Mirage, has secured $5.5 million in seed funding to accelerate its development of hardware designed to actively control artificial intelligence agents. The round was led by Redstart Labs (Info Edge India) and 360 ONE, with participation from MIXI Global Investments, Antler, and Blume Founders Fund. The investor consortium also features prominent industry figures, including WhatsApp CEO Kunal Shah, Razorpay co-founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, and Scribd founder Tikhon Bernstam. Founded by Apoorv Shankar, a former hardware vice president at smart ring maker Ultrahuman, Aina emerges at a pivotal moment in the artificial intelligence hardware sector. Shankar launched the venture after observing significant limitations in early AI interface products, particularly regarding their reliance on passive data collection rather than actionable control. His engineering and product design background, previously honed at Ultrahuman and his earlier hardware firm LazyCo, directly informs Aina’s focus on building pragmatic, workflow-automation hardware. The company’s initial product rollout centers on Dune, a compact three-key macro keyboard optimized for context-aware shortcuts. Dune enables users to manage microphone and camera inputs during meetings and execute application-specific scripts based on their active workspace. Prior to Dune, Aina prototyped two additional devices: Radiance, a tabletop video call controller featuring physical dials and dedicated function buttons, and Shift, a single-tap button designed to trigger repetitive digital tasks. Early user testing revealed Dune as the preferred interface, prompting the company to prioritize its commercialization while integrating feedback into a forthcoming, more advanced agentic device. Aina’s strategic direction explicitly rejects the prevailing industry model of always-on, context-recording wearables. Instead, the company is engineering action-oriented peripherals that leverage existing digital context to initiate and manage AI workflows. This approach aligns with a broader market shift toward hardware that serves as a direct command interface for large language models and autonomous agents. The landscape is rapidly intensifying, with established technology firms and agile startups simultaneously prototyping smart glasses, AI pins, conversational speakers, and dedicated control keypads. Notable industry movements include OpenAI’s recent release of a custom keypad for its Codex coding environment, Rabbit’s R1 assistant device, and Qualcomm’s ongoing experiments with dozens of AI interaction peripherals. With the funding secured, Aina will commence closed beta testing for its next-generation device in the coming weeks. The startup’s emphasis on tactile, agent-invoking hardware underscores a critical industry question: the next evolutionary step in human-computer interaction lies not in capturing user behavior, but in providing precise, low-friction mechanisms for directing artificial intelligence. As venture capital continues to flow into the AI hardware sector, Aina’s product testing and user acquisition phase will serve as a key indicator of whether dedicated control interfaces can outpace passive context trackers in practical enterprise and consumer applications.