A raft of voice-based hardware devices have emerged, aimed at companionship, productivity, or personal growth. These include card-shaped devices from Plaud<\/a> and Pocket<\/a>; pendants from Friend<\/a>, Limitless<\/a>, and Taya<\/a>; and a wristband from Bee<\/a>, which is now part of Amazon.<\/p>\n Now, two former Meta employees who worked on interface design have launched Sandbar<\/a>, a startup that has created a ring called Stream for similar purposes. The company calls the ring \u201ca mouse for voice\u201d because it can take notes, help you interact with an AI assistant, and also let you control music.<\/p>\n Sandbar\u2019s CEO, Mina Fahmi, has an extensive background in designing human-computer interfaces. He worked at Bryan Johnson\u2019s Kernel and later at smart glasses startup Magic Leap. Kirak Hong, Sandbar\u2019s CTO, worked at Google before joining CTRL-Labs, where the duo met. Meta acquired the startup<\/a> in 2019, and its work eventually led to neural interfaces for the tech giant\u2019s smart wearables.<\/p>\n Fahmi said that when large language models started emerging a few years ago, he built an experimental journaling app. However, he found that the app itself became a barrier to capturing his thoughts. Given his experience building hardware interfaces, he began exploring a conversational hardware interface instead.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of my ideas bubble up when I\u2019m walking or when I\u2019m commuting, and I don\u2019t want to pull out my phone to interrupt that moment. I don\u2019t want to shout into my earbuds where the world can hear me to talk through an idea. Kirak and I were trying to understand what it would take to actually capture a thought the moment it bubbles up. That\u2019s how we came up with Stream,\u201d Fahmi told TechCrunch in an interview.<\/p>\n The ring, designed to be worn on your dominant hand\u2019s index finger, has microphones and a touch pad.<\/p>\n In a virtual demo, Fahmi wore the Stream ring on his index finger and recorded his thoughts by pressing and holding the touchpad. By default, the microphone is off, activating only with this gesture. The microphone proved sensitive enough to pick up whispers and transcribe them in the companion iOS app. Other apps like Wispr Flow and Willow similarly allow people to capture their thoughts quietly.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> Stream\u2019s app includes an AI chatbot that converses with you as you record your thoughts. You can organize these into separate notes that either you or the AI can edit. The app also lets you pinch to zoom out and review what you have discussed over days or weeks. Sandbar has added a personalization layer so the assistant\u2019s voice sounds somewhat similar to the user\u2019s.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/SHINDELVERSE-143.jpeg?w=680\")
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n