AI startup Era has raised $11 million in total funding to develop a software platform that enables hardware makers to build AI-powered gadgets, the company announced in April 2026.
The funding includes a $9 million seed round led by Abstract Ventures and BoxGroup, with participation from Collaborative Fund and Mozilla Ventures. Era had previously raised $2 million in pre-seed funding from Topology Ventures and Betaworks. Angel investors include Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, iPhone keyboard creator Ken Kocienda, and former Rabbit CPO ShaoBo Z, among others.
Era was founded by CEO Liz Dorman, CTO Alex Ollman, and CPO Megan Gole. Dorman previously worked at Humane on AI orchestration before transitioning to HP following Humane’s acquisition. Ollman worked at HP on agentic frameworks for enterprises. Gole worked at Sutter Hill Ventures on the Jony Ive and Sam Altman io project before joining Era.
Rather than building devices itself, Era provides a software layer that hardware makers can use to create AI agents and orchestrations for their products. The platform currently offers access to more than 130 large language models from over 14 providers, supporting form factors such as glasses, jewelry, and home speakers. It is designed to handle multimodal inputs, customized voice creation, and dynamic routing across models while managing real-world constraints like connectivity.
Earlier in April, Era hosted a showcase in New York where artists using its developer kit demonstrated experimental gadgets built on the platform — including a device that delivers facts and jokes about France, one that monitors stocks and advises whether it’s a good day to quit a job, and another that reports on air quality.
“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. “What we’re building is the intelligence layer to allow anyone to create these types of intelligent objects, intelligent devices.”
Era plans to make its platform available to the open source and maker community and says it is built to scale across millions of devices. The company also aims to let users choose their own memory and model providers in a privacy-preserving way.
The AI hardware space has faced significant challenges — Humane was sold to HP, and Rabbit has gone quiet — though Era believes broader adoption will come as more use cases emerge for AI devices.
Source: TechCrunch