Sandbar's Stream ring records voice notes on a touch

Sandbar, a startup founded by two former Meta employees, has unveiled Stream, a ring built around voice input. The company describes it as "a mouse for voice": it captures spoken notes, lets the wearer talk to an AI assistant and doubles as a music remote.

Who is behind it

CEO Mina Fahmi previously designed human-computer interfaces at Kernel and at Magic Leap. CTO Kirak Hong worked at Google before CTRL-Labs, where the two met; Meta bought CTRL-Labs in 2019. Fahmi says the idea came after an experimental journaling app he built felt like an obstacle to recording thoughts, which pushed him toward a hardware interface for conversation.

How the ring works

Stream is meant for the index finger of the dominant hand and carries microphones plus a touch pad. The microphones are off by default and only listen while the pad is pressed and held. In a demo, the mic picked up whispers, which were then transcribed in the iOS companion app.

• The app includes an AI chatbot that talks back while you record, and notes can be edited by the user or by the AI.
• A pinch gesture zooms out to review conversations over days or weeks.
• The assistant's voice is personalized to sound somewhat like the user's own.
• Haptic feedback confirms a note was saved when no headphones are worn.
• The flat surface also plays, pauses and skips tracks and changes volume.

According to Fahmi, data is encrypted at rest and in transit on every tier, and exports to apps such as Notion are planned.

Price, funding and timing

Preorders open at $249 for silver and $299 for gold, and shipping is planned for summer 2026. A Pro subscription with unlimited chats and notes and early feature access costs $10 a month after three free months for preorder customers. Sandbar has raised $13 million from True Ventures, Upfront Ventures and Betaworks. True Ventures partner Toni Schneider said Stream's demo was the one that made sense to the firm after many AI devices it had seen.