AI Startup Era Computer Raises $9 Million Seed Round and Showcases Artist-Built Gadgets

Era Computer held a gathering of artists who received its developer kit in New York earlier in April 2026, TechCrunch reported. The artists showed off mini gadgets including a souvenir that tells facts and jokes about France. They also demonstrated a phone-like device that looks at stocks and tells if today is the day to quit a job, along with a gadget that tells about air quality.

Era’s platform allows hardware makers to create AI agents and orchestrations for AI devices. The company does not create devices itself. Instead, Era Computer aims to enable others to create devices by providing a software layer that handles tasks like customized voice creation or adding intelligence to devices such as headphones.

Era Computer has raised $11 million in funding to date. The startup raised a $9 million seed round led by Abstract Ventures and BoxGroup. The $9 million seed round had participation from Collaborative Fund and Mozilla Ventures.

Individual 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.

Era Computer was founded in 2025 by CEO Liz Dorman, CTO Alex Ollman, and CPO Megan Bole. Liz Dorman worked at Humane on AI orchestration and transitioned to HP as part of the company’s acquisition.

Alex Ollman worked at HP on agentic frameworks for enterprises. Megan Bole worked at Sutter Hill Ventures on the Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s io project and then transitioned to Era. Era provides over 130 LLMs from more than 14 providers.

Era’s platform enables different AI gadget form factors such as glasses, jewelry, and home speakers. Era thinks that we will see many form factors of AI hardware, including glasses, rings, and pendants. TechCrunch reported that Era investor Casey Caruso, who is a founder and managing partner at Topology Ventures, said the startup’s orchestration platform stands out because of its dynamic routing across models and managing real-world constraints like connectivity.

Dorman said that the core idea behind Era was to build a platform that could power the next generation of devices, which might ditch the 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. 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 out of touch with reality, making devices and forcing them onto everyone. I want a choice over my devices again,” Dorman said.

Era thinks that as more form factors come to the forefront, hardware makers will need a software layer that can handle multimodal inputs and inference for them to power intelligent functions.

“You can imagine this intelligence layer going to many different types of hardware. 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,” she said.

Dorman noted that the startup’s platform is set up to scale across millions of devices. The startup’s vision is that as more users adopt AI gadgets, it wants to enable users to choose their own memory and model providers in a privacy-preserving way.

Just like it held a showcase with artists, it plans to make its platform available to the open source and maker community to show how its platform can power different kinds of devices.

A big challenge in the AI hardware space is that there isn’t a model of a company that has found success. Humane was sold to HP, and Rabbit has been silent. Plaud has found some success in meeting note-taking space, while startups like Sandbar and Taya are early.