Aina's $499 AI smart ring adds a screen, joystick and mic

Aina's new ring has a joystick. It also has a screen, a microphone and a speaker, and the company is pitching all four as the way you talk to AI agents from your finger. TechCrunch reports that preorders open at $399 for early birds and $499 at retail, with shipping set for January 2027.

Founder Apoorv Shankar framed the design against the smartphone paradigm. "Phones and laptop screens were designed for an age of browsing where you think about opening apps," he told TechCrunch. "For interacting with proactive agents, we need a better interface, and that is what we had in mind while designing Aina."

The feature list reads like someone trying to pack a phone into a ring: take notes, set reminders, send prompts to AI agents, take calls, read and reply to phone notifications, check meetings, control Apple TV and smart-home gear, and call an Uber. On Mac, it dictates through Wispr Flow or Aina's own engine. The joystick handles navigation; gestures trigger actions.

Aina raised $5.5 million in July 2026. Before the ring, the team shipped Mirage, a three-key Mac controller. The launch lands the same day Nothing's Carl Pei teased a screenless AI device for December, another entry in a run of post-phone AI hardware experiments our AI assistants tracker has logged 119 stories about in the past 90 days.