Era raises $11M for AI gadget software platform

In April, Era brought together a group of artists in New York who had received its developer kit, showcasing a range of experimental mini gadgets. These included a souvenir that shares facts and jokes about France, a phone-like device that checks your stocks and tells you if you can finally quit your job, and a gadget that monitors air quality. While these creations are playful prototypes, they all share a common foundation: Era’s platform, which equips hardware makers with the tools to build AI agents and orchestrations for intelligent devices. Rather than manufacturing its own hardware, Era focuses on supplying a software layer that can handle tasks like customized voice creation or adding intelligence to existing products such as headphones.

The startup has secured $11 million in total funding. This includes a $9 million seed round led by Abstract Ventures and BoxGroup, with participation from Collaborative Fund and Mozilla Ventures. Earlier, Era raised $2 million in pre-seed funding from Topology Ventures and Betaworks. Notable angel investors include Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, iPhone keyboard creator Ken Kocienda, OAS founder Tony Wang, Little Guy co-founder Daniel Kuntz, Sandbar co-founder Mina Fahmi, ex-Rabbit CPO ShaoBo Z, and Poetry Camera creator Kelin Zhang.

Founded last year, Era is led by CEO Liz Dorman, CTO Alex Ollman, and CPO Megan Gole. Dorman previously worked at Humane on AI orchestration before transitioning to HP through its acquisition. Ollman focused on agentic frameworks for enterprises at HP, while Gole contributed to the Jony Ive and Sam Altman io project at Sutter Hill Ventures before joining Era.

Casey Caruso, founder and managing partner at Topology Ventures and an Era investor, highlighted that the startup’s orchestration platform stands out due to its dynamic routing across models and its ability to manage real-world constraints like connectivity. Dorman explained that Era’s core mission is to build a platform capable of powering the next generation of devices, potentially replacing the traditional app model.

“I think one of the incredible things that we can do with these AI models today is that you can replace that app layer,” Dorman said. “So what we’re building is the intelligence layer to allow anyone to create these types of intelligent objects, intelligent devices. And what we really believe is that the future of tech should not be made by people in San Francisco…It should not be people in their high fortresses who are so out of touch with reality, making devices and forcing them onto everyone. I want a choice over my devices again.”

Currently, Era offers over 130 LLMs from more than 14 providers, enabling diverse AI gadget form factors such as glasses, jewelry, and home speakers. As new form factors emerge, Era believes hardware makers will need a software layer capable of handling multimodal inputs and inference to power intelligent functions. “You can imagine this intelligence layer going to many different types of hardware,” Dorman added. “So we believe it’s not gonna be just glasses or rings or just bracelets. We’re gonna have a Cambrian explosion of what’s possible, and this is because tech is commoditized.”

The platform is designed to scale across millions of devices, while also accommodating custom AI device experiments that brands might pursue to attract specific users. Era’s long-term vision includes enabling users to choose their own memory and model providers in a privacy-preserving way. Similar to its artist showcase, the company plans to open its platform to the open source and maker community to demonstrate its versatility across different device types.

A significant hurdle in the AI hardware space is the lack of a proven success story. Humane was acquired by HP, Rabbit has remained quiet, and while Plaud has found some traction in meeting note-taking, startups like Sandbar and Taya are still early. Despite these challenges, Era believes that as users encounter more compelling use cases for AI devices, adoption will eventually stick.