Aina's $399 AI ring has a screen and a joystick for your agents

The "AI ring" is a titanium ring that connects to Macs and iPhones. It has a small display, a joystick-like button, a microphone and a tiny speaker.

It costs $399 for a limited time at pre-order. The retail price rises to $499, and shipping starts in January 2027. Pre-orders open Thursday.

You can use it to talk to AI agents, set reminders and take notes. You can also dictate text on your Mac through Wispr Flow or Aina's own dictation tool, and take phone calls.

In real life You are walking to a meeting and an AI assistant wants to book your ride home. You glance at the ring, see "Call an Uber?", and push the joystick to say yes.

An AI agent is a program that does tasks for you, such as booking a ride or sending an email, instead of only chatting. Founder Apoorv Shankar believes people will soon deal with technology through a series of approvals and rejections.

In his picture, agents come to you with a question, and you answer yes or no. "Yes, order that Uber," or "No, don't get lunch from that spot."

If several of those pings arrive each day, pulling out your phone every time becomes a bottleneck, he says. The ring is meant to remove that step.

Why it matters: the idea is that your phone stays in your pocket while the assistant keeps working. Shankar says approvals are going to be the future of how we interact with devices.

Each part of the ring has a job:

• Screen: shows notifications from your phone, your meetings and which app you are controlling. Shankar says the display matters because agents do not always answer right away, so you need confirmation that your action went through.
• Joystick: lets you navigate, approve or reject. It also works as a music playback control.
• Mic: you press the center button to talk to your AI agents or ask Aina to take notes. This is the "Aina Voice" feature.
• Speaker: lets you take calls. You start one with a voice command, then hold your hand to your ear.
• Gestures: trigger different actions depending on what is on your Mac or phone screen.

It can also control music and smart home devices, including Apple TV.

Aina says the ring's built-in assistant is always looking for the three things you will want next. It calls these suggestions "Aina Cues." They run on what the company calls its Context Aware Operating System.

The ring learns your routines from personal data like your location, calendar and email. It also uses third-party services you connect in the Aina app, such as Uber or Spotify.

Here are the examples Aina gives:

• 6 am run: when you put on your running shoes, it suggests continuing last night's podcast or playing music.
• 8:30 am commute: if you usually take an Uber to work, it offers the ride, and a flick of "yes" books it.
• Running late: if you are late for a Zoom meeting, it asks whether to email that you will be late.

Many of these actions will depend on which apps and features are supported. Shankar says you can write your own Cues in everyday language, for example a nudge to turn on the coffee machine at 8 am.

If your favorite app does not work with Aina, you can connect an AI agent of your choice, like Muse or Instinct. The agents then do the task through virtual browsers, which are browsers run by software instead of by you.

No. Aina made a three-key controller before. It was called Dune, and it showed off under the name Project Mirage at CES 2026.

You plugged it into a Mac, and its keys changed to match what you were doing. In a Google Meet call, the keys could mute your mic, turn off your camera or leave the meeting.

Aina studied how people used it and built the ring from those lessons. The startup was in stealth, meaning it kept quiet in public, for 15 months before today.

Shankar has made rings before. He was vice president of hardware at Ultrahuman, a fitness-tracking ring that competed with Oura. Aina raised $5.5 million in July.

Voice rings are not new. Here is how a few of them compare:

Aina is the most expensive and has the most parts. That is probably the point: with a screen and more controls, it stands apart from rings that only record notes.

Other companies are also trying to build gadgets for AI. Humane and Rabbit tried, and nothing has stuck yet. OpenAI is working on a device with former Apple designer Jony Ive. Many earlier gadgets claimed to replace your phone, while Aina says its ring sits beside it.

One reviewer used the ring for a few days. He said it feels like a smartwatch in a ring shape, with more controls.

It showed his notifications, let him reply, surfaced his meetings and could call an Uber for the ride home. The Apple TV remote itself is easier to use, he said, but the ring helped the few times he could not find it.

He also said a lot of the software and features are still being fleshed out. That makes it hard to say where the ring will fit into a daily routine.

The catch: the hardware ships in January 2027, and the Cues depend on apps and services you connect. Expect things to improve after launch, not before.

• If you use AI agents daily: the ring could save you from pulling out your phone for every yes-or-no question.
• If you want a simple voice-note ring: cheaper rings like the Pebble Index 01 do that one job for much less money.
• If you use an Android phone or a PC: the ring works with Macs and iPhones, so it is not for you yet.
• If you worry about privacy: the Cues use your location, calendar and email, so read what you allow before you connect anything.