In April, the startup Era hosted an event for artists in New York who received its developer kit. Artists displayed various gadgets such as a device providing facts about France, a phone-like gadget for stock analysis, and an air quality measuring tool. These are linked by Era’s platform, facilitating AI agent creation for devices. The company aims to offer a software layer for smart devices, not manufacture them.
Era has gathered $11 million in funding, including a $9 million seed round led by Abstract Ventures and BoxGroup with involvement from Collaborative Fund and Mozilla Ventures. Previously, Era 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, OAS founder Tony Wang, Little Guy co-founder Daniel Kuntz, Sandbar co-founder Mina Fahmi, former Rabbit CPO ShaoBo Z, and Poetry Camera creator Kelin Zhang.
Founded last year, Era’s key personnel include CEO Liz Dorman, CTO Alex Ollman, and CPO Megan Gole. Dorman transitioned to HP through an acquisition, while Ollman worked on agentic frameworks at HP, and Gole was involved in the io project before joining Era.
Topology Ventures’ founder Casey Caruso praised Era’s noteworthy orchestration platform for dynamic model routing and managing constraints like connectivity.
Era’s platform, intended to replace the app model, supports AI gadgets beyond traditional devices. Dorman emphasized the need for consumer choice over technology decisions traditionally made in San Francisco. The company supports over 130 LLMs from 14 providers to enable varied AI gadget forms, considering multiple multimodal inputs for intelligent functionality.
Dorman stated the platform’s scalability for millions of devices, supporting custom AI experiments by brands. Era’s long-term goal is to enable users to choose their memory and model providers privately. The company plans to open its platform to the maker community to demonstrate its potential for different devices.
Though many AI hardware companies haven’t succeeded, Era believes increased AI gadget use will popularize specific devices.